See The Pajama Game - You Deserve a Good Time

by Ed Felien

Babe (Tiffany cllen oolano) worries that her loyalty to the Union may come between her feelings for Sid (Jorge E. Maldonado) in Mixed Blood Theatre's bilingual production of |"The Pajama Game," playing at Sabanthani Auditorium through March 24. (Photo by Ann Marsen)

The Pajama Game

"The Pajama Game" is not just a glay, it's a celebration of all things Latino, of musical theater, of the profound and progressive impact Latin workers have had in the United States.

Director Mark Valdez has taken a 50-year-old musical comedy and breathed so much life into it that it reads like today's headlines.

Everyone on the Left (the Old Left, the New Left, the Old New Left, the Marxist Left, the Anarchist Left) dreams of a revolution where there will be a General Strike on May Day, the worker's holiday, and millions of workers will walk off their jobs and hold meetings and rallies to talk about their conditions as workers.
For 120 years—the Left has dreamed of such an event. It happened last year in the U.S. and the Left hardly noticed because the revolution was in Spanish. Latin workers are organizing unions and striking for decent conditions, and they're doing it under the radar of most of the progressive community.

Well, Mixed Blood Theatre's production of "The Pajama Game," much of it in Spanish with English subtitles, is a great place to catch up on the enthusiasm and the hope—and listen to some great songs again, this time with a Latin beat: "I'm Not At All In Love"; "Hey There";

"There Once Was A Man (Who Loved A Woman)"; "Steam Heat" and "Hernando's Hideaway." You'll want to sing along with "Seven and a Half Cents" and "The Pajama Game."

The actors are terrific. The love scenes between Jorge E. Maldonado as Sid and Tiffany Ellen Solano as Babe are muy caliente (very hot). The small band makes a great and wondrous noise, and there's a strolling violin for the tango at Hernando's Hideaway. Go! Enjoy yourself. You deserve it!

Through Mar. 24, 7:30 p.m. $ll-$28. 310 E. 38th St., Mpls. 612-338-6131.