Can it be true? ask thousands of distressed (mainly female) theatregoers.

The tour of The Full Monty stage show as it currently stands, which is coming to Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre, really is the final tour (though it will be back as a new production down the line).

Originally an award-winning movie, its sell-out shows are testimony to its popularity, years after it launched.

Few actors can hold a role for that long and make it their own, but Gary Lucy, who has played Gaz since the very start - while also playing Luke Morgan in Hollyoaks and appearing in Dancing On Ice and Footballers’ Wives - has done that.

“Gaz is such a great character to play,” he says. “Yes quite a lot of friends call me Gaz or sometimes The Luce! I love doing the show, Gaz is such a gift of a role and it’s great performing to a live audience every night. It’s such a good script and lots of fun working alongside the cast … I must love it ‘coz I keep coming back!”

And of that final, revealing, scene? “There’s nothing like live theatre, it’s really special. It can be quite interesting too, at some venues we’ve had to get the curtain in quick to stop them getting up on the stage!”

The bittersweet comedy about six out-of-work steelworkers from Sheffield who put on a strip show to raise

much-needed cash was written by Simon Beaufoy, who also wrote the screenplay, as well as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Slumdog Millionaire.

It’s a story that covers a huge range of modern issues – from unemployment to financial insecurity, mental health, divorce, sexuality and body image, and it has a mixture of comedy, pathos, warmth and sadness. Plus some nudity at the very end, of course.

The cast, led by Gary, includes Andrew Dunn - best known as Tony in Dinnerladies - as Gerald, Louis Emerick of Coronation Street and Benidorm as Horse, Joe Gill from Emmerdale as Lomper, Kai Owen from Torchwood and Hollyoaks as Dave, James Redmond of Hollyoaks and Casualty as Guy and, the youngest member of company, sixteen-year-old Fraser Kelly.

Director Rupert Hill, who is best known as Coronation Street’s Jamie Baldwin, says of being at the helm: “I don’t need to reinvent the wheel in every scene but there are things that I want to explore. The main thing for me was that all the female characters felt a bit secondary, so I am trying to make the relationship between the couples to be more meaningful and integral to the story.”

And he also set his cast homework in an effort to understand their characters.

“I got the cast to watch the Ken Loach film Raining Stones,” he says. “It was the film that inspired the Full Monty – they wanted to make a film that Ken Loach characters would watch.

“I think that’s one of The Full Monty’s strengths and it is unbelievable how relevant that film and our show feels now; payday loans, unemployment and anger at society. The financial situation the characters find themselves in is desperate, but that mix of comedy and relatability makes the show part story and part party. Ken Loach meets Cabaret!”

He’s a big advocate for the stage show, which he believes is actually a better vehicle for the strip than the film.

Read our review of the show here.

“It is celebratory and it works better on stage because the audience become part of the scene. The guys stripping at the end feels like a defiant gesture and the crowds go wild!”

But just how wild?

“I can’t imagine that I will ever experience that kind of response from an audience again.

“You can actually feel the sound wave hit you and it is wonderful. But I really want to earn that and for the audience to buy into the story.”

DETAILS

The Full Monty is at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury from Monday, January 28 to Saturday, February 2. To book tickets visit marlowetheatre.com, or call 01227 787787.