Malta’s MADC Dares to Bare in ‘The Full Monty’ – Steelworkers, Strippers & Social Commentary

Shirts off, curtain up: MADC goes ‘The Full Monty’
By Hot Malta staff

Valletta’s historic Manoel Theatre is about to get a lot warmer. From 26 April to 5 May, the Malta Amateur Dramatic Club (MADC) is stripping away both textiles and taboos with its production of “The Full Monty”, the stage musical adapted from the 1997 British film about unemployed steelworkers who become accidental male strippers. In a country where village festa statues bare more skin than the average local, the prospect of six Maltese men dropping their boxers for art is already causing parish-whisper levels of hysteria.

Director Chris Gatt insists the show is “closer to a social comedy than a Chippendales revue”. Set in post-industrial Sheffield but translated to a recognisably Maltese landscape of closed factories and WhatsApp job alerts, MADC’s version swaps the original’s bleak British winter for a sweltering Maltese summer where the dole queue snakes past pastizzi kiosks. “We kept asking, ‘What would drive Maltese men to risk ridicule and possible arrest for one night of nudity?’” Gatt laughs. “The answer was debt, pride and the price of diesel.”

The cast is pure community theatre bingo: a Gozitan plasterer, a Birkirkara bank clerk, a retired AFM band sergeant, two IT technicians from Mater Dei and a sixth-form teacher who swore he’d only join if his students never found out (they already have – the TikTok duet has 42 k views). Rehearsals have been held in the same St Venera scout hall where most of them learned badging as kids, lending the choreography sessions the surreal air of a catechism class gone rogue.

Localising the humour meant peppering the script with references to Enemalta bills, pastizzi carbs and the universal terror of running into your ex-parish priest while wearing nothing but a fireman’s helmet. Musical director Pamela Bezzina rearranged the score to include a brass section that tips its cap to the traditional Maltese banda, ensuring the big anthem “Let It Go” (no, not that one) sounds like it could segue into a ħamrun festa march. Even the notorious finale – yes, the full monty – is timed to coincide with the city’s 8 p.m. cannon fire from the Saluting Battery, a cheeky nod to synchronized explosions that has heritage purists clutching their pearls.

Culturally, the production lands at a fascinating moment. Malta’s unemployment rate may be the EU’s lowest, but precarious contracts and rising rents have left many feeling like the economic boom passed them by. “We’re surrounded by cranes and crypto ads, yet our friends still live at home at 35,” explains actor Daniel Azzopardi, who plays the Robert Carlyle role of Dave. “The show asks what masculinity looks like when you can’t provide – do you lash out, or do you dance?”

The answer, apparently, is both. MADC has partnered with local mental-health NGO Richmond Foundation to offer post-show talkbacks on male anxiety and suicide prevention, topics that resonate in a country with one of Europe’s highest male suicide rates. Audience members will find helpline cards tucked inside their programmes alongside the usual adverts for pastizzi shops and yacht brokers. “If we’re asking people to laugh at six lads in G-strings, the least we can do is start a conversation about what’s underneath the bravado,” says producer Marisa Xuereb.

Ticket demand has already crashed the theatre’s antique website twice, with the 400-seat house 90 % sold out and a waiting list longer than the queue for St Paul’s shipwreck relics. The Archbishop’s Curia issued a gently worded reminder that “the human body is a temple”, but stopped short of condemnation, perhaps recalling that Caravaggio himself was no stranger to full-frontal holiness. Meanwhile, boutique hotels in Strait Street are packaging “Monty weekends” with prosecco and complimentary feather boas, proof that even community theatre can nudge the tourism needle.

Back in the scout hall, the cast is perfecting the nerve-shredding “zipper moment” under the watchful eye of choreographer Stefania Fabri, who keeps shouting “Sell the cheek, not the shock!” The men, pink from exertion and cheap supermarket spray tan, insist they’re ready. “We’ve been mooned by election billboards our entire lives,” shrugs plasterer-turned-rapper Noel Camilleri. “Time to return the favour.”

When the curtain finally falls, whether they reveal everything or leave the tiniest fig leaf of mystery, MADC will have done something bigger than flash flesh: it will have reminded Malta that vulnerability can be a communal act. In a nation obsessed with keeping up appearances, baring it all – even for two hours of scripted comedy – feels like the most honest thing to happen on a local stage in years. Just don’t sit in the front row unless you’re prepared for the full Maltese monty: sweat, sequins and possibly a stray fleck of Gozo gypsum.