Performance Preparation Academy – The Pajama Game

The Pajama Game, performed by Performance Preparation Academy, continues at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford until 15 June 2019.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

In a riot of colour, comedy and complex choreography, The Pajama Game sends PPA’s final-year graduates out into the real world with all guns blazing.

The 1954 Broadway musical, which three years later spawned one of the late Doris Day’s more memorable movies, is the students’ final fling before trying to make a living at the game and, under Lucy Stewart’s inspired, pacy direction, they take it with both hands.

With music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross from George Abbott and Richard Bissell’s book, the show is a feast of hit songs and spectacular dance routines.

‘Hey There’ was a No. 1 hit for Rosemary Clooney, ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ reached No. 2 and ‘Steam Heat’, ‘There Once Was a Man’ and the catchy ‘Once a Year Day’ are all still sung and fondly remembered. They have stood the test of time.

The main numbers are superbly sung by the lovers from both sides of the floor at the Sleep-Tite nightwear factory, Ellie Birch as Babe, the leader of the union grievance committee, and Jack Stark as the superintendent brought in to quell potential strike action. At issue is the factory owner’s refusal to grant a 7.5 cent pay rise.

Birch’s thrilling, powerful voice commands the stage while Stark was already down in my notebook for his five-star performance in PPA’s Zorba, the title role he shared with the equally good Tommy Pegg, again impressive here as jealous factory timekeeper Vernon.

And with parts for the entire year’s intake – the Yvonne Arnaud stage bulges to overflowing with 37 on it for the ensemble numbers – it’s a perfect fit for a student production. There are two separate casts over the five-day run to give as many students as possible the chance to shine.

Not everyone is perfect. Shouty, shrill top notes are not only unpleasant on the ear, they also make words indecipherable and a number of lines are lost, particularly in Act I.

How much overtime choreographer Sarah Day must have put in to work out complex routines featuring such a large cast can only be guessed but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and she gets an A+ for effort and performance.

The exaggerated tango which lights up ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ and the sizzling ‘Steam Heat’ sequence from Amber Boggust’s Mae and the boys are terrific fun.

In what is a fine team effort, other parts are taken by Samuel Quick (excellent as mean boss Hasler), Nicole Morrin,  Jed Hoyle, Starr Lydster, Cameron Jacob Foster, Billy Thompson, Edoardo Pallanca, Killian Thomas Lefevre, Millie Hansford, Makeda Ansah, Chelsea Little and Oli Dickson.

The sure hand of PPA principal Louise Pieri is as discernible as ever on costumes and stage design and full marks for the sound effect and the band under musical director Mary McAdam in a finale to remember by the class of 2019, a vintage year.

Jeremy Chapman