If you go just for a little man-skin, you will not be disappointed within the first five minutes of PacRep’s hilarious production of The Full Monty.

When the curtain went up, it was Ladies Night at the strip joint and the whole audience was invited. Of course, as entertaining as the male stripper was, the real show was going on in the crowd where women hooted and men laughed nervously and fidgeted.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll love the musical. Jack Stauffer’s direction is sharp and Don Dally’s music is as rocking as ever. Terrence McNally’s excellent adaptation relocates the story from working class Britain to Buffalo, New York effortlessly.

But the play belongs to its cast, in particular John Farmanesh-Bocca, who, amazingly, is also doing double duty in PacRep’s concurrent show, Fully Committed. Somehow Farmanesh-Bocca manages to suspend our disbelief that any New York millworker would express his emotions through song by lurching and punching and kicking and shouting his way through the play with subtle grace, strong acting and killer timing. As a result, the character Jerry somehow straddles too very different worlds in such a way that we’re not the least bit surprised when the music swells and he opens his mouth to sing.

When first we meet Jerry, he’s collecting his unemployment check from his union. He and his co-workers have been out of work for 18 months and the stress is getting to them. Jerry hasn’t been able to pay child support and is in danger of losing his visitation privileges with his 12-year-old son.

Then the music swells and suddenly these tough guys in flannel, jeans and Buffalo Bills caps burst into song. It’s a little jarring at first, but the music is heavy enough to make the whole scene plausible and the lyrics are very clever.

In the first song, “Scrap,” Jerry sings about the uselessness of his life, “I’ll be wetting down the razor, then I’ll figure ‘What’s the point?’ So I go into the living room, roll another joint. Then lunch. Then a beer. Then sitting like an ape on the sofa with a hankie and the same old porno tape.”

Jerry gets the idea to strip for money when he and his best buddy Nathan, another unemployed steelworker, sneak into the local male revue to get Nathan’s wife out of the audience. Instead, they are amazed by how the women are going wild in the audience and how much money they’re spending.

Instead of getting Nathan’s wife out of the strip club, they’re forced to hide in the bathroom stall while a gaggle of women, including Nathan’s wife and Jerry’s ex-wife, burst into the men’s bathroom and perform a rather poorly choreographed but amusing number.

Jerry is convinced they can make a mint and reclaim their long lost masculinity by stripping and he convinces Nathan, a sad and beer-bellied bastard, that it’ll be a breeze. Nathan, played with compassion and humor by Jor-el Vaasborg, is game, but insists he still needs to go do the dishes before his wife gets home.

Jerry and Nathan begin working out. They’re out running through the streets of Buffalo when they come across a fellow steel millworker attempting suicide in his car. It’s a hilarious moment. Jerry immediately enrolls the poor suicidal sumbitch, a night watchman at the steel mill, in the idea of stripping with the funniest song of the show, a dark ditty called, “Big Ass Rock.”

“Let’s find a rock, I mean a big-ass rock or maybe something like a cinder block is better,” Jerry sings. “I’ll hoist it up and drop it on your face, my buddy. And just before the lights go out you’ll see my smile and you’ll know you’ve got a friend. With a rock. Who cares.” The song is worth the price of admission alone.

The new friend, Malcolm, played with a simper by John G. Bridges, agrees to strip simply because he’s overjoyed that anyone will have anything to do with him. But he has his reservations: “My mom says I’m pigeon-chested,” he worries.  He is, but he also has access to rehearsal space in the steel mill, so he’s in.

The boys blackmail Harold, their former supervisor and a good dancer, into producing their strip show as he’s also lost his job but his wife doesn’t know. As Harold, Michael D. Jacobs is hilarious. But the scene is stolen by MaryAnn Schaupp-Rousseau, who plays his lovely, ignorantly blissful wife, in a catchy samba number, “Life With Harold.”

The guys round out their stripping corps by auditioning a big black man who can dance, and a little white man with no dance skills but with an impressive prop in his pants. Incidentally, as Noah, James “Pete” Russell very nearly steals the whole show with the number “Big Black Man.”

It’s a tremendously fun and slightly raunchy musical that truly rocks. Of course, be warned: The boys do, indeed, perform the Full Monty.

THE FULL MONTY plays Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm at the Golden Bough Playhouse, Monte Verde and Eighth, Carmel. $26-$36/adults; $12-$25/seniors and students. 622-0100 or pacrep.org.