HOW fitting it was that on the night London’s real-world tube workers were striking, Richard Huish College’s factory workers were hustling over 7.5¢ in musical comedy The Pajama Game.
A storm from beginning to end, the show was set in 1954 Iowa in the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory, its workers desperate for a pay-rise.
But with big man above Mr Hasler’s big concern (as Daft Punk says) for them to “work it, make it, do it … harder, better, faster, stronger”, the cash-strapped employees start on a ‘Slow Down’.
The 16- to 19-year-olds’ production got this musical to a ‘T’.
The cast got the musical down to a 'T'.
There was the orchestra, seated right at the heart of the action, playing its segue of an overture, dotted with jolly post-war trills and humming violin.
Love and politics clashed between sceptical Babe (the perfectly-fiery Lizzie Clarke), Grievance Committee leader and superintendent Sid Sorokin (the cleanvoiced Charles Bailey), who reprised their comic love song with the same pizzazz as Sinatra and Celeste Holm in High Society.
LIZZIE Clarke as Babe.
From the anxious, hand-wringing Heines (Sam Dunnet) to the melodic Mabel (Hannah Deason-Barrow), and Prez (Josh Bassett), who tells all the girls they’re one of a kind, I could’ve watched this show again and again.
SAM Dunnett (Heines) and Hannah Deason-Barrow as Mabel.
The way the stage stepped up-down around the musicians like a donut was key to how the show built pace; how the characters physically seized the factory space in song and dance, in sure-fire musical style.
From the acting, lighting and stagecraft to the orchestra and technical side of the show, the students ran a tight ship.
Had she been there, Doris Day, the Babe of The Pajama Game film, would’ve been whoopin’ and hollerin’ as loud as the rest.
Having a song and dance.
All photos from Richard Huish College
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