Review of The Pajama Men, London 2010

These two comedy actors from Chicago have just finished a week of performing at the Soho Theatre. A few years ago they were nomuinated for the Perrier Award whilst performing at the Edinburgh Fringe. They have been widely and, almost universally, proclaimed as brilliant. So I think that it is time for my balancing, counter-view to be published. Maybe it's just me and my family who don't get it, because many other members of the audience on the last night were clearly ready to fall off their seats with uncontrollable merriment. Meanwhile I was consoling myself with the knowledge that it really had to end sometime, and eventually it did. I simply could not see what was funny most of the time. The jokes were laboured, involved a lot of 'funny faces' and 'funny voices' and went on for an interminable time. One, with sound effects, of someone shuffling cards (you get the idea...brrrrrrring noises as the invisible cards were bent and released and flew through the air) must have gone on for five minutes. They do tend to signpost jokes so you knew that when it seemed about to end that it was bound to pause and then start again...which it duly did...and again...and again. Being generous, it ceased to be funny after about thirty seconds, which made the next four and a half minutes a nightmare of tedium. Before anyone goes to a future show I urge you to check them out on Youtube because if this is not your kind of humour then you will learn all about the relativity of time, as in how a minute can feel like a ten year sentence.