The Pajama Game to Return in Fall with New Cast

The Roundabout Theatre Company revival of The Pajama Game, which will play its last performance at the American Airlines Theatre on June 17, is set to re-open on Broadway in a commercial production this fall. While the show is currently headlined by Harry Connick, Jr. and Kelli O'Hara, it will feature a new cast when it returns.

Richard Bissell's novel 7 1/2 Cents inspired The Pajama Game, which features music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross and a book by George Abbott and Bissell. In the musical comedy, a battle ensues when workers at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory demand a seven-and-a-half cent raise from their reluctant employers. Matters are complicated when the head of the Union Grievance Committee, Babe Williams, falls in love with one of the company's leaders, Sid.

The Pajama Game, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, opened on February 23 to mostly positive reviews. In his Broadway.com Review, Rob Kendt wrote: "The show's generic professionalism ultimately makes this starched and pressed Pajama Game resemble a road-show museum of the mid-century American musical, with players who know all the old moves but not what they signify. The fault can't be laid entirely at the feet of Marshall or the Roundabout Theatre, except insofar as they failed to recognize the irredeemable flimsiness of George Abbott's libretto, or to realize that Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's score has a few choice bits of ear candy and a bunch of milky duds."

The Pajama Game has received three Drama League nominations, eight Outer Critics Circle nominations and seven Drama Desk nominations. Interestingly this production was originally expected to have a commercial mounting on Broadway with Connick, Jr. in the fall of 2005. That plan was jettisoned in favor of having the show done with the non-profit Roundabout. The Roundabout presented The Pajama Game "by special arrangement with Jeffrey Richards, James Fuld Jr. and Scott Landis" and those three producers will be behind the fall 2006 presentation of the production.