BOOM AND DOOM.(The Pajama Game)(Theater review)

I went to see "The Pajama Game" in 1954, at the invitation of my godfather, Eddie Foy, Jr., who played Hines, the perennially jealous, stopwatch-toting time-study man at the Sleep Tite pajama factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the musical's drama of labor and sexual relations is acted out. In the area of sexual relations, Uncle Eddie's legend preceded him: when his wife threatened to leave him, he reportedly nailed all her clothes to the floor. He certainly nailed the part. The show was a smash. With its crafty, unpretentious buoyancy, "The Pajama Game" was a first on Broadway in a number of important ways: it was the first Hal Prince production, and the first show to be choreographed by Bob Fosse; it had the first hit score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and the first significant performance by the dancer Carol Haney (who was later replaced by her understudy, Shirley MacLaine); and it was the first musical I ever learned by heart. Still, it seems to me that the Roundabout's revival (deftly directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, at the American Airlines) outshines the original in both its production values and its male lead, Harry Connick, Jr. This is also some kind of first.

Here, the curtain rises on the gorgeous hubbub of Derek McLane's set. Huge pink and orange buttons decorate the proscenium arch. Like a comic simulacrum of Jean Tinguely's absurdist "Rotozaza," revolving wheels send a steady stream of red-and-white striped pajama tops through the air above the stage. The factory girls below, wittily costumed by Martin Pakledinaz, lean over their sewing machines, pushing plaid and polka-dot fabrics past humming needles while singing their mantra of mildly alienated labor: "Hurry up, hurry up / Can't waste time, can't waste time / When you're racing with the clock . . . /And the second hand doesn't understand / That your back may break and your fingers ache."

"The Pajama Game" is set in the mid-fifties, a time when Americans were enjoying a postwar boom in productivity and one of the greatest per-capita rises in wealth in the history of Western civilization. The opening number, nonetheless, establishes the workers' plaint: they want a seven-and-a-half-cent raise, and they may have to strike in order to get it. In the original Broadway production (and in the movie), John Raitt played Sid Sorokin, the factory's ambitious new supervisor, who takes on the head of the Grievance Committee, Babe Williams. Raitt was the quintessential Broadway leading man of the period; he had a barrel chest and a bowwow baritone. Onstage, he was foursquare and as clean as a whistle, and he struck a slightly humorless heroic pose. By contrast, there's something louche and loosey-goosey about Harry Connick, Jr., who is making his Broadway debut in the role. He's gangly and a little furtive; his almond eyes seem to be hiding something, which only adds to his mischievous appeal. Connick is not what Broadway deems conventionally handsome. He has no beefcake swagger; he doesn't force himself on the audience. He has, instead, the confidence of talent--and the sex appeal that comes with it. Here, when boy meets girl there is credible chemistry.

Connick's real prowess, of course, is as a musician and song stylist--he has sold more than twenty million records since his first album was released, in 1987. His voice is particularly well suited to Adler and Ross's clever score, which boasts at least a half-dozen bona-fide hits. (In the mid-fifties, Broadway was still the purveyor of many of America's most memorable popular songs.) Raitt's voice came from operetta; Connick's is all jazz--slangy, smooth, and playful--which fits the colloquial verve of the lyrics. His best acting is done in song. "Hey There," for instance, begins with Sorokin dictating a memo to himself about his attraction to Babe (the excellent Kelli O'Hara), then, as he plays back and responds to his own recorded voice, the song turns from a bittersweet soliloquy to a tortured duet:

MACHINE: Better forget her, SID: Forget her, MACHINE: Her with her nose ...