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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Brian Logan

Edinburgh festival: The Pajama Men, Versus vs Versus

I bow to no one in my fondness for wigs and false moustaches. But it is bracing to see performers capable of flitting from character to character with just an arched eyebrow, a clenched jaw or a deepened voice. US double act The Pajama Men are such an act. Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen — formerly known as Sabotage and Perrier-nominated in 2004 — wear only pyjamas and have no props. But their hour of interlinked sketches tells a story that features a dozen characters, from Roman centurions to bolshie shop assistants, new-age healers to teenage sweethearts.

Ostensibly, then, Chavez and Allen are physical comedians. And sure enough, they boast several terrific mime sequences: my favourite was the cuckold's reverie, in which the pair act out, to a jaunty mandolin soundtrack, a juddering, stop-motion sex scene between wife and lover. Their instant morphing between characters is meticulous but never showy, probably because physical trickery isn't the whole point here. We're a long way from Men in Coats. The Pajama Men are equally committed to acting, and to droll, dry humour — as when Chavez plays a sleazy seducer let loose on the audience. "Some people say beauty is only skin deep," he purrs. "If that's true, you must be made totally out of skin."

The show has the look and feel of impro — in which Chavez and Allen, veterans of Chicago's Second City troupe, also reportedly excel. Its least successful moments are those that seem most scripted: the cutaways to two TV announcers, say, or Allen's solo spiel about laughing at "retards". Elsewhere, it is just a pleasure to watch the two of them together at play, building their bizarre world. "The sky hangs heavy above us," runs one line, "like a fat man on the top bunk." Don't let the pyjamas fool you: this is bright-eyed, bushy-tailed comic theatre.

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