Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed on 15 June 2017
If you could choose anyone to be stuck in a broken elevator with, who would you choose? After last night’s performance, I’m going to go with the Pajama Men.
Using two chairs, boundless imagination and an incredible talent for creating out of this world characters they crafted a beautiful absurdist masterpiece. Razor sharp wit and deadpan dad jokes alternated with scenes that were incredibly awkward and sometimes downright weird in a show that was never short of engrossing.
Jumping between vividly created (and utterly outrageous) personae at a breakneck speed, the self-described “convoluted plan and thin storyline” is comprised of sketches of passengers on a plane grounded on the tarmac. That’s just the framework on which to display the characters, though, and within the first several minutes we’d already seen a Latina air hostess, Lovecraftian beast and sacrificial lamb brought to life, without ever having to sacrifice our suspension of disbelief.
The performance has the carefree inventiveness of children putting on a show unbounded by the laws of logic, with the bonus that the performers are incredibly skilled physical actors who are able to bring their creations to life with a wonderful array of voices and mannerisms.
At times they seem to be engaged in a game to see if they can make each other break character and start laughing, and they come pretty close. Unbounded by the need to keep character, we were the beneficiaries in a show that is many things but never anything less than utterly enthralling.
Reviewed by Alexis Buxton-Collins
4/5
Venue: Space Theatre
Season: 16/7 7pm, 17/7 7:30pm
Tickets: premium $51.90, A reserve $46.90
Bookings: http://www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au/events/pajama-men/
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