When he was 15, Jake Fraser played young Nathan Bukowski in Supa's first production of The Full Monty in 2006. As his character was the teenage son of an unemployed steel-mill worker, he was not required to disrobe.

Now, 13 years later, he's back in the company's new production of The Full Monty. About half the cast were also in the previous staging but Fraser in particular has a very different role. This time, as an adult performer, he will have to take off all his clothes - that is, go "the full monty".

The show is a 2000 American stage musical adaptation of the 1997 British film. In the musical, the action has been relocated to Buffalo, New York in the 1980s.

Jerry (played by Dave Smith) is among those who were laid off, along with his best friend Dave Bukatinsky (Max Gambale). He is desperate for money to make all the child support payments he owes his ex-wife Pam (Sarah Hull) since losing his job, and is at risk of losing his son.

Jerry comes up with an idea after talking to one of the Chippendales, who are in town to perform for an audience of enthusiastic ladies, including some of the men's wives.

If women will pay money to see a male striptease act, he reasons, surely they'll be willing to pay for a similar act by the men they know? Especially if those men are willing to go all the way?

He and Jerry go about recruiting participants who are in circumstances like their own. There's lonely Malcolm (Bailey Lutton) who works as a security guard at the closed steel mill, and Harold (Michael Jordan), who takes a ballroom dancing class with his wife Vicki (Kirrily Cornwell) but hasn't yet told her he is unemployed. Auditions come up with more: the older Horse (Garrett Kelly) and Ethan (Fraser), whose full potential is revealed when he drops his trousers.

Accompanied on piano by showbiz veteran Jeanette (Lauren Nihill) they get down to business, but various problems intervene: lack of confidence, lack of talent, lack of money.

Will the men be able to surmount all the challenges and go all the way?

Looking back at the 2006 Full Monty, Fraser has few specific memories of the production – "It was so long ago" – but recalls it as "one of the best shows I've ever done".

The following year he moved to Sydney where he attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts. The school didn't perform shows and he wasn't impressed by the standard of amateur theatre in Sydney so it's been a while since he was on stage.

But after returning to Canberra and seeing The Full Monty was coming up again, Fraser decided, with the encouragement of his partner, to audition.

Ethan, he says, is the comic relief of the show, a free spirit and highly sexual - "I'm playing him as a bit of everything."

The character is, he thinks, "a bit simple".

"He's just who he is, doesn't overthink anything, and doesn't realise he's a bit different from other people," Fraser said.

Playing Ethan doesn't faze him in the slightest: "I'm probably the gayest straight dude: touchy-feely, not ashamed of anything."

It almost seems like a role Fraser was born to play: in addition to a public service job he works as a topless waiter ("heaps of fun") and as a hens' night stripper, going down to a G-string, performing lap dances and organising risque party games such a whipped cream race in which two women compete to lick all the cream from "their" side of his body.

Like Ethan, he says he is happy with himself and doesn't care what other people think.

"I'm not going to change."

He did, of course, change in one inevitable respect: growing older.

And that's why the role of Jerry's son Nathan is being played, this time, by two 15-year-old actors who are sharing the role (with parental permission).

Joshua Nicholls and Callum Doherty both have plenty of experience both in school and mainstage musicals in Canberra.

Nicholls says, "Nathan is a kid who is the father figure to Jerry."

Although he's the parent, Jerry is somewhat immature as well as disheartened by the turn his life has taken, Nicholls says.

"Nathan takes on the grown-up role - he wants his dad to succeed and get a job".

Doherty, who's mostly done musicals, says he's enjoying the challenge of a non-singing role. He had heard of The Full Monty but never seen it in any of its incarnations ("It's my grandparents' favourite film").

Not naturally possessed of a salty tongue, he says of the swearing in the show, "I've gotten used to it."

Director Chris Baldock says the thing he loves most about The Full Monty - both as a movie and a musical - is its heart.

"It's sometimes hilarious, really entertaining and very moving."

And, he says, the final scene in the show will "raise the roof".

The age recommendation is worth heeding, Baldock says - if this were a film it would be classified MA15+.

"It's not Shrek."