PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Komedia, Bath (Wed 30 Nov)

COMEDY Expectations are high in Bath on Wednesday evening, as Edinburgh Fringe favourites The Pajama Men bring their well-reviewed show to these parts for the first time; and after a bit of a false start, our excitement is roundly vindicated. Things kick off disappointingly with Piff the Magic Dragon, a magician in a cute dragon costume who performed a few good, but overly familiar small-scale magic tricks with the help of a very small dog. His grumpy-young-man persona is well developed but there are no really decent gags, and the magic itself is accomplished but fails to catch the imagination, especially when competing with the elaborate, colourful costumes and props.

Fortunately, the main act is many times more inspired. The US duo (Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen, always in their trademark pajamas and using minimal props) are as difficult to categorise as they are occasionally baffling to watch, and all the better for it. The closest comparison that works is a sort of 21st Century Marx Brothers - a mix of inspired physical comedy, ingeniously silly one-liners and affectionate genre spoofing, with an internal logic all of its own.

The rough-and-ready sci-fi plot revolves around Ross Sparks, a humble and not especially bright astronaut who improbably claims to have invented time travel. We hop around his own timeline, meeting a range of grotesque characters each played with consummate skill by either Chavez or Allen, and sometimes both. Ross’ birth takes place in a a hospital populated by bitchy midwives and patients with a host of comically horrific injuries; his father meets an explorer who tells his backstory using marionette puppets, obliging the men to swing and lunge around the stage clumsily as they play the puppets themselves; and the space aliens in pursuit of Ross are created by way of one actor placing his hands over the other’s face in unsettling, mobile arrangements.

The invention is properly staggering, and the physical pratfalling is offset by some choice verbal gags of which Groucho himself would be proud: “I don’t have children myself, it skips a generation in my family. I guess that’s why my parents were never around when I was growing up,” says one character in a faux-sincere monologue. Laughter comes thick and fast from the audience, but there are no knowing chuckles here, just helpless guffaws of the what-the-fuck-just-happened-there variety. The pair clearly still find each other hilarious, too, and you suspect they must vary aspects of the show each night (even as far as who will play a particular character at any one time), to keep it feeling as fresh as it does.

In the final act, the various plotlines come together and the actors have the audacity to enact a full-blown, cinematic, slo-mo montage sequence on stage, using only their two bodies. By this time the laughter has dried up; not because it’s not funny, but because the sheer ambition and skill on stage make it hard to catch your breath.

The Pajama Men create a world that’s as clever and funny as any you’ll see on stage, and one we didn’t want to leave. (Tom Hackett)

Copyright Tom Hackett 2011