Just the other day I was telling somebody that Marc Richard (the director of the Theatre Sheridan production of Plane Crazy) is good friends with actress/choreographer Jane Johanson.

What's cool about that is I saw Jane Johanson performing "Steam Heat" as part of a high school production of The Pajama Game back in the 1970s.

And that is what sparked my love of musical theater and my interest in that show. I went on to play Gladys and dance "Steam Heat" in the Queen's Musical Theatre production of The Pajama Game in the 1980s and it has remained my favorite musical.

So I smiled when I read an article by Lillian Ross in the latest The New Yorker magazine (Feb. 13 & 20, 2006) called "Pajama Connection". The article is a conversation with Harry Connick Jr. (who plays Sid), Michael McKean (who plays Hines) and Kathleen Marshall (director/choreographer) that talks about the numerous connections to past productions of the show.

For example, the company's managing director, Harold Wolpert, is quoted:

"Our subscribers are very excited," he said. "It turns out everybody you talk to has a "Pajama Game" connection. They know George Abbott directed the original, with Bob fosse choreography. Then they saw it in schools. In the past ten years alone, it's been produced in more than eleven hundred schools and in four hundred and fifty community-theatre productions."

He goes on to say:

"Well, a guy in my office, who comes from Pepper Pike, Ohio, saw it when he was in eighth grade, at a local high school," Wolpert said. "It made him dtermine, then and there, that he was going to come to New York to be in the theatre."

Sound familiar?

In the article McKean says of his connection:

"I did the show in school, Long Island's North Shore High, in 1964...Mr. Mooney, our North Shore English teacher, was both the director and the choreographer," McKean said. "I auditioned for the part of Hines then. But Mr. Mooney wouldn't give it to me."

Kathleen Marshall offered up a connection as well:

"Our leading lady, Kelli O'Hara, auditioned in 1996 for The Pajama Game put on by her university in Oklahoma City, but she didn't get anything".

Turns out you never really get over those early rejections:

"Mr. Mooney is now living in North Carolina," McKean said, "I'm going to call him and tell him I finally got the part of Hines."

You can take the actor out of The Pajama Game, but you can't take The Pajama Game out of the actor!

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