THE Full Monty holds a special place in York's heart: it was the film where local lad and one-time Theatre Royal carpenter Mark Addy made his name 21 years ago.

Now, here comes the first touring production to visit York, billed as the last ever ever ever tour in its present star-encrusted format: the 2013 play that marked the first time screenwriter Simon Beaufoy had written for the stage.

It is the Fullest Monty yet, still with film's greatest bits and greatest hits (Hot Chocolate, Donna Summer Tom Jones, Horse's rheumatic yet rhythmic audition to Wilson Pickett's Land Of 1000 Dances), but with the politics and anger turned up to 11, chiming anew with this age of austerity, zero hours contracts, cut-off careers and Brexit-shadowed industrial stasis.

So while this Full Monty is another strip off the old block, it remorselessly tears a strip off the "old enemy", Margaret Thatcher, with the Tories being compared with a Nuremberg rally. The sting is this tale grows ever deadlier, and yet the show is uproariously funny too.

The setting is the Sheffield of Nineties’ industrial strife, the blade stuck into the heart of the Republic of South Yorkshire’s steel industry, stripping the steelworkers of their jobs, their dignity and their future. Baroness Thatcher hangs over Beaufoy’s play both metaphorically and physically: the steelworks crane, dormant since the factory fell cold and silent, was named after merciless Margaret. Its former operators, ex-prisoner Gaz (Gary Lucy) and big Dave (Kai Owen), have snuck into their old workplace to nick a girder for scrap.

So starts the familiar story that envelops insecure security guard Lomper (Joe Gill) and Gerald (York actor Andrew Dunn, in his third tour as the jumped-up foreman with a sideline in dancing at the Conservative club and a free-spending wife he is yet to tell he has lost his job).

Enter the girls: Mandy (Amy Thompson), Gaz’s ex-wife, threatening to cut off his links with son Nathan (Fraser Kelly) as he falls behind with the maintenance; and Jean (Liz Carney), Dave’s long-suffering, yet devoted, cleaner wife.

When inveterate schemer-dreamer Gaz suggests forming an unlikely strip act, a kind of Fish'n'Chippendales, up step dance routine teacher Gerald, shell-shedding Lomper and lovable lump Dave, plus Scouser Horse (Louis Emerick, with his wow-factor James Brown moves) and Guy (James Redmond), with his appendage of Cumberland sausage proportions.

Women dominated Monday's audience, drawn by the jock-strap tease of the strip finale, but as the ever excellent Dunn stresses, it is as much a play for men, as Beaufoy carves its story from impotence, unemployment, job-club ennui and suicide attempts. The comedy is rooted in the grit of northern life: desperation, resilience, love, community, fighting back; bloody-minded Yorkshireness.

Tremendous performances abound in Rupert Hill's bristling production, from Lucy's Billy Liar figure to Owen's struggling everyman; Dunn's comic timing to Kelly's resilient Nathan. A full-on hit, hats off all round.

The Full Monty, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york