Pajama Party

By Lisa Clark 

Sarah Jones and Nicholas Johnson are having a Pajama Party and none of their guests show up but it still manages to be a fun party. How could it not be with a magician and a ventriloquist running things?

Pajama Party has all the elements you might expect from a good party, including, party games, party food, entertainment, a DVD to watch and stories to tell. Fairly dark stories. Darkness plays a big part in this show. Whether it is the perfectly, comically timed blackouts or the content of a lot of the material that often turns corners into wrongtown. Sarah and Nicholas manage to balance a precarious relationship of bickering best friends who occasionally cross the line and come back to winning us and each other over.

Although the show is a series of sketches, it never feels sketchy. The performance flows as seamlessly as the events of a well organised party. The voice of a radio DJ is used cleverly throughout to connect scenes and pull it all together. There is a lot of prop comedy and the audience is coerced into pulling their weight.

Sarah Jones and Nicholas Johnson are both proven performers in their own right. Although perhaps better known for their ventriloquist and magic skills, they can hold their own on any standup bill as they have worked hard at building their comedy skills and here their brilliant magic and vent skills are the icing on the cake rather than the other way around as is often the case. In Pajama Party Nicholas performs one of the most famously impressive card tricks there is but he subverts the showstopper so that the laughs have priority and it is one of the most impressive comedy/magic bits I’ve seen in a long time.

There is a lot of subverting going on in Pajama Party, every element has been given an unexpected twist and it’s not surprising it was nominated for a Golden Gibbo Award at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. For a seemingly ramshackle low-fi Fringe show, it’s actually a pretty polished affair and the experience of Sarah and Nicholas shines. They also make a really enjoyable team and I can highly recommend you accept their party invitation.

Pajama Party is on at The Imperial Hotel until Sept 29
http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/pajama-party/