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The Pajama Game by San Diego Junior Theatre  Making pajamas is not all fun and games – it’s serious and
tedious work most definitely deserving of an occasional 7 & ½-cent raise.
As the labor leaders calculate in the 7 & ½ Cents scene, that works
out to roughly $3,411.96 over twenty years (assuming a certain amount of
overtime and interest). That 7 & ½ cents could also carry an even bigger
price tag – breaking up the new romance between the head of Sleep Tite Pajama
Factory’s Employee Grievance Committee (Babe Williams) and the new management
rep (Sid Sorokin) who is under orders to keep the workers working without giving them
even one red cent of their requested raise.
Such is the driving plot of this quaint romantic musical comedy from the 1950s. The dated, simplistic, silly, but still fun show contains plenty of quirky characters and songs highlighted by the ballad Hey There (You With the Stars in Your Eyes) and the tango-ish Hernando’s Hideaway. San Diego Junior Theatre’s “Confetti” program, designed for their advanced students, allows the Junior Theatre youth to take on every aspect of production for their big annual show at the Casa Del Prado Theatre in Balboa Park. Julia Giolzetti, fresh off her starring role in JT’s Romeo and Juliet, flawlessly cast and directed this performance that finds all the goofy comedy and even squeezes out some sorrow when the stitching falls out of Babe and Sid’s relationship at the end of act one. Ferril Gardner (Babe) and Ryan Wagner (Sid) deliver excellent performances in that scene and in their romantic play throughout, Ferril demonstrating a commanding stage presence with her voice and humor and Ryan perfectly portraying the normal guy who gets jammed between love and his job. Actually, both Babe and Sid are sort of the “normal” people in this show. Pajama factories seem to attract the oddest employees – but that makes for the most entertaining of workplaces and plays. Not the least of which is Hines (Alex Fleming), the knife-throwing manager of the pajama stitchers who is insanely jealous of his flirtatious girlfriend Gladys (Karli Cadel) who doesn’t try very hard to alleviate his paranoia. Alex is hilarious throughout, and especially when teamed up with other comic gem Tiffany Brown who tries to teach him how to control his jealousy by having him imagine Gladys in a variety of suspicious situations in I’ll Never Be Jealous Again. One of the “real” suspicious situations turns out being Hernando’s Hideaway – a big musical number that Gladys leads with farcical sensuality. The comical ensemble of factory workers sew up a great show with that scene, a Once a Year Day company picnic done polka style, and their charismatic union rally when they make their final case for that elusive pay raise. Unfortunately this was a one-weekend-only show, but you can catch most of the cast in Junior Theatre’s current production of The Sound of Music.Performed March 11 and 13, 2004. |