2014 Melbourne Fringe—
Pajama Party
Posted on 30 September 2014
Pajama Party is a delightful adult confection, like a tiramisu sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Melbourne Fringe is its second outing in this city, after a short run at the comedy festival. It really deserves a larger venue and larger audiences. This is an expert piece of comedy.
Sarah Jones and Nicholas Johnson have organised a pajama party, but no one has arrived…except the audience. This premise provides the framework for a series of sketches that range from the silly to the downright disturbing. They cleverly find ways to weave in their skills as respectively a ventriloquist and a magician, but never at the expense of story or comedy. Johnson murdering an orange was one of the funnier shticks I’ve seen in a long time. I cheered when Jones’s character wanted to be Santa Claus.
These two have been honing and expanding their skills for some time. It’s always a pleasure watching performers grow. Jones in particular is finding more depth in her delivery and material. As slight as the story is, it makes the show more than a mechanical presentation of entertainment tricks and into something memorable.
Nicholas Johnson and Sarah Jones are the founders of The Variety Collective at Brunswick Green. If you have missed Pajama Party, you can catch these two performing there on the odd Wednesday evening.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
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