Pajama Game Review
'Pajama Game' is wide-awake fun
Saturday, January 5, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
Ann Arbor News ARTS WRITER
Sassy and brassy and jokey and tuneful. If "The Pajama
Game" - currently playing at Lydia Mendelssohn, courtesy
of Ann Arbor Civic Theatre - doesn't offer much more, that's
still a load of goodness.
Bravo to director/choreographer Ronald P. Baumanis for
resurrecting this keystone 1950s American musical, which
swept the Tony Awards nearly half a century ago but isn't
performed nearly enough today.
Had this Romeo-and-Juliet-like romance between lovers on
opposite sides of a factory labor dispute been formulated in
the Depression-ridden 1930s, it would likely have been a
didactic, power-to-the-workers tragedy/triumph. But by the
mid-'50s America's postwar economy was booming, life
seemed both good and safe (despite those nasty
Russians), and what could be more fuzzily appealing than
a show centered on pajamas?
Baumanis and his talented Civic actor/singer/dancers
clearly understand the essential frivolity here, pushing for
the same laughs George Abbott, Harold Prince and Bob
Fosse (among others) did back in 1954. "The Pajama
Game" clocks in at just over two hours, an astonishingly
swift pace: That's probably appropriate given that the
musical's plot evolves out of the efforts of an efficiency
expert, Professor Hines (played by Anthony J. Provenzola)
to speed up employees' work output at the Sleep Tite
Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
In a politically oriented show, Hines and the factory's
profits-obsessed Boss (Dave Feiertag) would be arch
villains. Not so in "Pajama Game," in which the Boss -
played with grand, bull-headed authority by Feiertag -
dances happily at the annual company picnic and
ultimately folds at the slightest threat to his well-being.
And far from a slave-driving whip-cracker, Hines is a goofy
guy who could have stepped straight off a vaudeville stage.
A worrywart about his semi-loyal secretary-girlfriend
Gladys (Emily Phenix), the rubber-boned Provenzola goes
through all kinds of literal flip-flops. He even wears a
vaudevillian checkered suit, the pants of which he drops at
one point to test a pair of defective pajamas. When Gladys
helps her sweetie re-don his trousers, they get stuck in a
howling physical comedy riff that intentionally upstages the
concurrent dialogue of other characters.
That's just one of the joys of this production that moves
without a breath of wasted air. Baumanis underscores the
vaudeville by often closing the Mendelssohn curtain and
having performers do numbers sans set. Yet "The Pajama
Game" never loses its plot thread, as new factory
superintendent Sid Sorokin (Kevin Binkley) and union
grievance committee head Babe Williams (Melissa
Henderson) fumble their way into romance despite an
imminent strike that could tear them apart.
This assembly-line love story is genuine, and it's Binkley
who makes one care. A wooden thespian and so-so singer
a few years back in Civic's "The Sound of Music," Binkley
has mastered a whole new words-and-music presence: His
tough-but-tender Sid is utterly in sync with the '50s
plethora of musical stars in the Drake/MacRae/Raitt/Keel
macho mold. His singing voice is now a wonder of
versatility, soaring from baritone into high tenor on Sid's
great love song, "Hey There."
Sadly, leading lady Henderson doesn't pull her weight. A
petite actress, she registers hardly any Babe-like moxie
and passion. She's overshadowed by Phenix, who clearly
has a ball as flirty Gladys: Whether shooting off one-liners,
dancing female lead in the famed Fosse-cum-Baumanis
"Steam Heat" or doing a wild parody of a ballet at the
company picnic, she's a joy to watch.
Juanelle Roberta Celaire's undernourished orchestra needs
a tune-up, but the cast does splendid choral justice to
Richard Adler and Jerry Ross' wonderful song score. Take
"Hernando's Hideaway," performed in near-total darkness
as cast members wink flashlights on and off under their
chins - a creepy wonderment that's just one of the marvels
in this very non-arthritic musical classic.
"The Pajama Game" continues at 8 p.m. tonight and 2
p.m. Sunday at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, 911 N.
University Ave. Tickets are $18 general, $16
students/seniors. For details call (734) 971-2228.