The Pajama Game

Harry Connick

I used to see a lot of Broadway plays and musicals but I don't anymore because I got sick of paying $100 a ticket to sit in a hot theatre in seats designed for petite 19th century people filled with fat 21st century people --- all to watch something which probably sucks and then take 20 minutes to navigate out of a theatre to beat down old women to find a cab.

Ugh. I'm tired just reliving it.

Anyway, I do like to keep up with the reviews.

Harry Connick opened in "The Pajame Game" last night and --- true confession --- Harry gets me hot.

I worked with him once in about 1990 and he was so tall and so nice and so southern and so sexy and so talented and his skin, hair and voice were all like honey. He knew how to flirt with the boys and the girls to keep everyone happy.

Mmm. I'm horny just reliving it.

Ben Brantley raved about the show and I'm happy to read that Brantley can rave as well as he rants.


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February 24, 2006
Review: New ''Pajama Game'' Sizzles
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:20 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Who knew there was so much sex appeal in a piece of musical theater that passed the half-century mark two years ago?

Well, check out the sizzle provided by the Roundabout Theatre Company's robust, thoroughly beguiling revival of ''The Pajama Game,'' which opened Thursday on Broadway.

Much of that oomph -- although not all -- is provided by the interaction between the musical's leading man and leading lady -- Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli O'Hara. As the show's two protagonists, they generate enough heat to warm the American Airlines Theatre into the next decade.

Credit director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall with putting the two of them together in this venerable 1954 musical, with its catchy score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross and a serviceable yet sturdy book by George Abbott and Richard Bissell.

Back then, it was big hit, peppered with such hit songs as ''Hey There,'' ''Small Talk'' and the tango-flecked ''Hernando's Hideaway.'' The show also marked Harold Prince's debut as a producer and Bob Fosse's bow as a Broadway choreographer.

The story concerns a possible strike at a small-town pajama factory with the union activist (O'Hara) pitted against the plant superintendent (Connick). That they are in love only complicates matters, although in true musical-theater fashion, their eventual happiness is never in doubt.

Marshall has an obvious affection for the material, but her take on ''The Pajama Game'' doesn't slavishly duplicate the original. Instead, she wisely plays to the strengths of her performers, showcasing them in the best possible light.

For example, there's a moment midway in the second act when, during an extended -- and hilarious -- version of ''Hernando's Hideaway,'' Connick delivers a jazzy piano riff on that tango parody, sending it into the stratosphere.

The man, with his chiseled good looks, has a genuine stage personality. He takes ''Hey There,'' sung in the original by the legendary John Raitt, and makes it his own. Connick croons in a style that suggests Frank Sinatra with a dash of Elvis Presley thrown in for good measure.

The svelte O'Hara, playing a character appropriately named Babe, is sensational. She is a performer who has grown from role to role, starting with ''Sweet Smell of Success'' to ''My Life With Albertine'' to ''The Light in the Piazza''' and now this. They are four shows that couldn't be more different.

So when the two of them join forces for that booming country-tinged ''There Once Was a Man,'' the effect is electric, a musical-comedy mating call made in heaven.

One of the other joys in this ''Pajama Game'' is watching an entire parade of lesser known but amazing performers do their stuff.

Michael McKean hams it up agreeably as the factory's time-study man, who keeps Gladys, the big boss' overworked secretary, forever at bay. Gladys is played by Megan Lawrence, a comic of megawatt talent. Lawrence, who scored last summer in the Public Theater's Central Park production of ''Two Gentlemen of Verona,'' is a scene-stealer of the highest caliber.

Peter Benson, who perfected the role of the sweet-tempered nerd in Marshall's version of ''Wonderful Town,'' again demonstrates why he is one of the best second-bananas in the business, here playing a goofy, mama's boy union leader. And Roz Ryan, as another factory secretary, provides heaps of sass as a brassy foil to McKean.

Purists might be upset that ''Steam Heat,'' the musical's signature dance number, has been taken from Gladys and given to another supporting character, Mae, played by the gaminlike Joyce Chittick. Nonsense. A superb dancer, Chittick, ably assisted by David Eggers and Vince Pesce, swivels through the song with ease.

Marshall's choreography pays homage to Fosse's original work. How can it not? But she has her own effortless, ingratiating style that finds expression not only in the show's exuberant dance numbers, but in the fluid, snappy pace of the entire evening.

Derek McLane's factory setting, framed by a proscenium arch covered in big red buttons, has rows of pajamas floating by above the performers in assembly line fashion. They are fun to watch. But then so is this entire ''Pajama Game,'' a prime, grade A example of why musical comedy can be such a joyous experience.



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