New Musical in Manhattan

The Pajama Game (music & lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross; book by George Abbott and Richard Bissell) wound up the season with as exuberant high spirits as New Year's Eve winds up the year. So high are the show's jinks, in fact, that they almost render unimportant the primitiveness of its jesting; and so engaging are a number of its people that it doesn't too much matter what they do. As staged by George Abbott and Jerome Robbins, The Pajama Game is a smash-hit mixture of racehorse and explosive; not in a long time has any musical so merely competent seemed at the same time so gay.

Treating of life in a Midwest pajama factory, the show makes a sit-down strike over wages seem the next thing to a strawberry festival, while the head of the business and the head of the union are not so much contrasted bosses as brother oafs. Since in musicomedy the course of true love never can run smooth, in this one, Management (John Raitt) Meets Labor (Janis Paige), Management Fires Labor, then, with a little more dexterous management, rehires and weds her. En route there are small blobs and faint glimmers of satire, the usual doings at shop and picnic grounds, and some wackily unusual ones in a chop-suey joint.

It is all so George Abbotty that even the workers' slowdown gives the effect of a speedup; it is all so well managed that even the fumbles seem something new in footwork. There are the kind of peppy dance numbers that suggest a cheerleaders' carnival, and there is a great deal of music with an infectious, elementary lilt. A long-legged, gaminlike newcomer named Carol Haney dances like a dervish and is generally fun; Eddie Foy Jr. softshoes nostalgically and is generally helpful. John Raitt and Janis Paige make an attractive, a melodious, even a positively believable pair of lovers.

George Abbott, co-author and co-director of Pajama Game, is the theater's Wizard of Odds: chances are that any show he brings to Broadway will be a hit. He started out as an odds-on favorite when he directed one of his first shows, Broadway, in 1926. Through the years he added such winners as Three Men on a Horse, Boy Meets Girl, Brother Rat, Room Service, Pal Joey, Where's Charley, Call Me Madam, Wonderful Town, Me and Juliet.

Along with these successes, the legend of "the Abbott touch" could hardly fail to grow, but the showman modestly claims there is no such thing. "I just have a good time in the theater," he says. "I'm not out to make money; I'm out to enjoy myself . . . I'm easily bored, so I try not to bore audiences. I have been accused of speed in my shows, but pace is not a matter of speed. It has to do with cutting material and with variety." The most important intangible in a good production, he says, is a sense of conviction. "I told the cast on opening night: 'You've got to believe what you do and have a good time. If you do, the audience will too.' "

Abbott learned his trade as a youngster just out of Professor George Pierce Baker's famed playwriting courses at Harvard. He worked for Producer John Golden, soon became a menace to established playwrights, whose scripts he doctored on Golden's orders. Later, he earned a reputation as a man who had his own golden touch with scripts. He picked up Brother Rat, which had been rejected by 31 producers, polished it up, grossed more than a million dollars. He worked the same miracle on Room Service, which had closed out of town. When Abbott was done with the play, it ran two years and was sold to Hollywood for $255,000.

Now a lively 66, Abbott is an inveterate tennis player and a tireless rumba dancer. He likes some movies and television, and although he has worked a little at both, he plans to stick to Broadway. First production for next season: a revival of the 18-year-old Rodgers-Hart-Abbott revue, On Your Toes. Says Abbott genially: "They used to say I was a producer of kiddie shows. Before that they said I was a producer of gangster shows. Now they say I'm a musical-comedy man. I don't care what they call me as long as they come to the theater."

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