The Pajama Game: One Hundred and Eleven Bucks Doesn't Buy a Hell of a Lot

I never thought I would begin a review of a Broadway musical by discussing the sound design, but unfortunately that is the dominating element of director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall's mostly bland mounting of The Pajama Game, which only comes alive when the supporting players are allowed to inject their own personal sparkle and musical comedy expertise.

 

Yes, Broadway audiences today are accustomed to being blasted out of their seats at times. That's not the problem here. I can reluctantly deal with contemporary musicals that were created to have loud, overwhelming sound. And for many rock musicals it's an appropriate artistic choice. But this is The Pajama Game, a 1954 musical created in a time when the sound designer was the conductor. Richard Adler and Jerry Ross' score is a classic example of musical comedy brashness and lighthearted fun. George Abbott and Richard Bissell's book (needlessly, and sometimes harmfully, revised here by Peter Ackerman), based on Bissell's comic novel, 7 1/2 Cents, may require you to check your brain at the door, but it's well-crafted fluff in the great Mr. Abbott tradition of blue-collar, real people entertainment that mixes heart with a healthy sex drive.

 

I'm not a technical person, so I really don't know if sound designer Brian Ronan could have done anything about the artificial noise coming out of conductor Rob Berman's twelve musicians playing painfully scaled-down orchestrations by Dick Lieb and Danny Troob. From the first notes of the prelude (the original overture has been changed and cut down substantially) to the final measure of the playout music, hearing the untextured sound is like listening to a CD played in mono. (Synthesizer Programmer Andy Barrett is the only member of the orchestra to have his name written in bold letters in the Playbill credits.)

 

After a muddy sounding rendition of the title song sung by an unseen chorus (yes, the original opening featuring the character of Hines has been cut) the curtain rises on the busy sewing room of the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Ohio. This is where Adler and Ross have placed the terrifically energetic "Racing With the Clock", a three-part counterpoint number with workers' voices coming from all parts of the stage. Ladies gossip about the hunky new superintendent and men discuss the threat of a strike while the supervisor calls for everyone to "hurry up" and others sing out a repeated warning of "can't waste time." Under normal circumstances it's a musically thrilling piece that imitates the hurried pace all around the factory. But in this case, the homogenized wall of sound that passes through the American Airlines Theatre makes every voice seem to come from the same place, making it impossible to determine during the quick-paced song who is singing when. The same problem occurs during every group scene and song.

 

The above annoyances are not unique to this production of course, but I can't recall ever hearing such a pronounced artificiality in an old-fashioned book and song Broadway musical. But what seriously pulls this production down is the interpretation of the starring role, which seems specifically created for a heavily amplified theatre.

 

Harry Connick, Jr., making his stage acting debut by starring in a Broadway musical, plays the lonely city boy, Sid Sorokin, the factory's new superintendent, with a continually grim sneer (even when he's happy), stilted body language and a soft voice that must make the board operator have to crank it up to 11. When he sings, the sound is of a heavily amplified whisper, with stylized crooning that plays with the melody but has nothing to do with the lyric or the character. Being a rookie stage actor I wouldn't hold him responsible for this low-key interpretation that barely comes across the proscenium. I would assume that's director Marshall's doing. His most enthusiastic display of energy at Friday evening's performance was at curtain calls, when he vigorously waved his arms up at the seated audience and urged them to give a standing ovation for his castmates.

 

Kelli O'Hara, a fine singing actress normally seen on Broadway in sweet soprano roles, makes an admirable stretch in taking on the hard-as-nails belty role of Babe Williams, the union leader who falls for the handsome superintendent, despite being on the opposite side of a labor dispute that could result in a strike over a proposed 7 1/2 cent raise. Perhaps under better circumstances her performance would have greater impact, but she's stuck playing love scenes with a leading man who appears to be internalizing every emotion and is trapped within Marshall's ineffectual staging. Although Babe denies her attraction to Sid in her first song, "I'm Not At All In Love", the music is a sweeping waltz; a musical joke that tells the audience she really is hot for him, whether she knows it or not. Marshall's static staging seems to ignore the subtext of the music, making Babe cold and unlikable. At the number's end she has O'Hara stand on a table with her arms outstretched, a completely unmotivated move that looks like she's just doing what the director told her to do.

 

There is no sexual tension at all when Connick and O'Hara sing the teasing comic foreplay number, "Small Talk", and in the morning-after celebration, "There Once Was a Man", Marshall has her leading man looking constipated, performing stony-faced hip-swivels.

 

O'Hara finally gets to show her stuff in Act II when, left alone on stage, she sings a thoughtful, endearing reprise of the show's most popular song, "Hey There". Connick croons the song in Act I like the star singing the hit tune. O'Hara sings it like an actress exploring the emotions of her character. It's by far one of the evening's finest moments.

 

Marshall's standard choreography, which isn't bad but lacks originality and build, is enlivened by a terrific supporting ensemble of funny and vibrant singers and dancers who are delightful to watch. Her best staging move is to plant the hilarious Jennifer Cody front and center as often as possible. Known to steal shows Off-Broadway and out of town, Cody has only appeared on Broadway in chorus roles, but hopefully her goofy comic delivery and entertaining character dancing will lead to major supporting gigs soon.

 

The main subplot involves Hines (a sweetly funny Michael McKean), the time study man and knife-throwing expert, and his flirty girlfriend Gladys (Megan Lawrence). Marshall's staging of McKean's first number, "I'll Never Be Jealous Again" (a duet with Roz Ryan, who has fine moments as a no-nonsense executive secretary) again seems to downplay what's in the music, going for realism and wasting much of the juicy vaudevillian walking-tempo style of the song. Thankfully, she does use the dance tag at the end of the number and his Act II novelty tune, "Think of The Time I Save" is much more on the mark, but the addition of "The Three of Us", a Richard Adler song not written for the show but used here to cap the story of Hines and Gladys, unnecessarily halts the action just when the plot is racing to resolve.

 

Megan Lawrence simmers on the back burner in Act I, before getting her chance to boil over with show-stopping panache, comically trying to seduce Connick with "Hernando's Hideaway." She squirms, wiggles and sings with uproarious squeaky-voiced sexuality in the most memorable solo bit of the night. Her character is supposedly convincing Sid Sorokin to take her out to her favorite nightspot, but when she arrives it's not Sid taking her arm, but Harry Connick, Jr. The rest of the number is an out-of-character specialty for Connick where he comes out dressed in flashy threads and plays his own honky-tonk version of the tune. (Marshall does provide one very funny routine in this scene involving Lawrence seductively placing her body between Connick and the piano.)

 

In smaller roles, Peter Benson has some terrifically eccentric dance moves as the nerdy union president. Joyce Chittick, as his nerdy girlfriend, Mae, gets to perform the big dance number "Steam Heat" (another script revision) along with David Eggers and Vince Pesce. Their work is slick and professional, though the choreography itself can use some spice.

 

The show is visually very cute with Derek McLane adding Eisenhower-era color to his factory set (framed by a proscenium of oversized buttons) and costume designer Martin Pakledinaz creating pajamas in every crazy pattern imaginable. Peter Kaczorowski lights the piece with a show-biz flair.

 

There's a famous story where George S. Kaufman came to see a mid-run performance of a show he directed and immediately called for a rehearsal the next day to "take out all the improvements." I would wish the same for this production of The Pajama Game.

 

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Kelli O'Hara and Harry Connick, Jr.

Center: Kate Chapman, Jennifer Cody, Bianca Maroquin, Bridget Berger, Michael McKean, Paula Leggett Chase, Joyce Chittick and Debra Walton

Bottom: Roz Ryan and Michael McKean