Sweet Dreams - Ann Arbor Civic Theatre's 'Pajama Game' Should Keep Sandman At Bay

Sweet dreams

Ann Arbor Civic Theatre's 'Pajama Game' should keep sandman at bay

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER

News Arts Writer

One could easily make a case for “The Pajama Game” - opening tonight at Lydia Mendelssohn, courtesy of Ann Arbor Civic Theatre - as the quintessential 1950s Broadway musical.

Though it lacks the name recognition of a “My Fair Lady” or a “Sound of Music,” this broad-shouldered show is emblematic of the optimistic gusto of post-war America, the world’s reigning military and economic power and damn proud of it. “Everything in it has a certain rhythm and beat that speaks for the ’50s,” notes Civic director Ronald P Baumanis about “The Pajama Game,” whose 1954 plot centers - more romantically than didactically - on labor strife at a pajama factory.

“It’s a big, old-fashioned show that owes a great deal to American vaudeville,” Baumanis says. “So many characters have their own physical-comedy schticks. But it also has a political tone ... The ’50s were a time when American unions were arguably at their peak of power. Even the pajama-company picnic commences with a union song. It was a time when most people had jobs, the economy was booming, and unionism was very popular.”

Yet though times are good, worker tensions are seething at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory. When a company efficiency expert (played by Anthony Provensola) recommends speeding up the assembly line, Union Grievance Committee head Babe Williams (played by Melissa Henderson) demands compensation from factory superintendent Sid Sorokin (Kevin Binkley) in the form of an extra seven-and-a-half

cents an hour per worker.

Sid is new on the job, and he and Babe feel an instant chemistry between them. Yet like Romeo and Juliet, their mutual romantic attraction is doomed since they’re on opposite sides of the bargaining table. As tempers grow

short and strike talk flares, Babe semi-accidentally sabotages the whole factory (a major production number in itself). Reluctantly, Sid fires her.

That’s only part of this show’s surprisingly convoluted plot, which involves a subsequent tryst between Sid and a mousy bookeeper (Emily Phenix) who’s just waiting for the right man to turn her into a sexy vamp - no matter that she’s the efficiency expert’s girlfriend. Meantime, who’s gonna put the pajamas on shivering American consumers?

“I’ve got a cast of 27 singer-dancers,” Baumanis says, “and everyone gets something to do individually, all sorts of little comic bits. It’s a show that should be very fast-moving, very ’50s funky. A lot of things fly and move right in front of you. It’s a show that swept the Tony Awards that season, and people should realize why.”

One reason, of course, is the musical’s remarkable Richard Adler-Jerry Ross song score, whose Top-40-style numbers include “Hernando’s Hideaway” (performed in near-darkness with flashlights) “Hey There,” “This is My Once-a-Year Day,” “I’ll Never be Jealous Again,” and the factory-oriented “Steam Heat.” This Act Il-opening song-and-dance number first shot Bob Fosse to fame as a major choreographer.

“It’s a great, great number,” says Baumanis, who choreographs as well as directs. “This was the work of a very young Fosse, but you can’t help but feel his shadow if you’re

putting in your own dance movement.

“I think the number has to stay endemic of the ’50s, but I think I bring the Baumanis style to it,” he says with a chuckle.

Civic’s “Pajama Game” will be wrapped in artifacts of the era, including Davy Crockett coonskin caps and the throbbings of Hit Parade songs during intermission. “My cast is loving it,” Baumanis says, “because they get to come in and sing and dance every night. In modern musicals you don’t get to kick up your heels and do tangos and fox trots. Here we do it practically non-stop.”

Cover

Story

The Pajama Game

Ron P. Baumanis directs an Ann Arbor Civic Theatre production of ‘The Pajama Game’ at 8 p.m. tonight, Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Michigan League, 911 N. University Ave. Tickets: $9. Information & reservations: (734) 971-AACT.

Kevin Binkley and Melissa Henderson in ‘The Pajama Game.’

'A lot of things fly and move right in front of you. It's a show that swept the Tony Awards that season, and people should realize why.' - Ronald P. Baumanis,director