“Are You Ready to Do Something Completely Brilliant?” – Nigel Gladstone
It’s 2014, and Nigel (Oliver Callahan) is looking to turn past glories into future ones. His band Fur Pajamas had a hit record with “I Can Feel It” in 1989, in the dying days of the New Wave genre before it gave way to grunge. The changing times and band member conflicts meant they split up before they could follow it up. Desperate to get back to the top (and namedropping Belinda Carlisle along the way), he arrives at Empire Music and the office of Andi Wilson (Rachel Croom), a brand-new young talent agent looking to make a name for herself. She only wants to license “I Can Feel It,” but Nigel hatches a bigger scheme: turn the Fur Pajamas album Gruesome Gardens into a jukebox musical for an upcoming competition. It’s going to be “a Jekyll and Hide for the 21st Century”—to paraphrase the concept, it will be Gothic rampaging monsters meet obsessive teenage love. Andi is on board, but the deadline is in one week and Nigel must get the cooperation of his estranged bandmates: the bitter Peter (David Michael Kirby), and former bassist—and Nigel’s former girlfriend—Claudia (Ronda Christie), who’s about to sue Nigel for stealing her own words to craft the Fur Pajamas lyrics. Claudia had gone on to form the Pom-Poms in the 90s, and wants their music to be part of the musical. And things get more complicated (and very funny) from there…
As part of the Next Step Theatre Festival in late spring, Fur Pajamas immediately showed it has tremendous legs, in a reading that felt almost like a full-fledged opening night, so exuberant were the performers. The songs by John Allman, who accompanied the cast on keyboard, and David Ceci (book and lyrics) are catchy earworms, sung impeccably by the 9-person cast. As the squabbling ex-mates, Callahan, Kirby and Christie are great fun to watch and very believable as artists with a long complex history, and Croom is an engaging heroine as Andi navigates her own path to success while dealing with the challenging personalities of her clients.
The leads are complemented by a hilarious Sam Seleznow as the Maître D of the restaurant Delirium, where many chats (and arguments) take place; Heidi-Liz Johnson as Nigel’s Ex wife E.J., who becomes pivotal to the success or failure of the project; Elizabeth Alm as Andi’s colleague Denise, and Niko Rissi as Zach Powell, an up-and-coming pop star who Andi is enamored with. Shayna Rives provided stage directions at the reading and contributed to the stellar singing.
The story of Fur Pajamas (directed by Andrew Coopman) is tremendously entertaining, with many twists and turns, accompanied by terrific tunes like the aforementioned Pajamas hit “I Can Feel It,” “C’est la Venus,” and the fitting “Drive a Delorean”, a lament about wanting to go back in time and make things right. The story ends with the rousing and moving number “Don’t Let Them Go” about hanging on to what matters in life—both human connection and artistic dreams as they intertwine. Fur Pajamas is an overall spirited, joyful experience that will have you leave the theatre happy, hopeful, and singing.
Learn more at https://www.davidceci.com/fur-pajamas-musical.
Arts Independent 