Hotel.

By all accounts `Pajama Tops' should be a laugh a minute.

"An utterly mad farce'' reads the blurb on the play's programme cover. Great, just the sort of Carry On, saucy seaside postcard, Benny Hillish sort of humour, full of confusion, misunderstanding, innuendo and double entendre that's erm...right up my alley, if you pardon the expression.

Unfortunately there are a few salient points in this play by Mauby Green and Ed Feilbert that make it a pretty poor example of the slap and tickle genre; namely the script and the cast.

OK, on paper the basic plot looks promising. French businessmen Georges Chauvinet neglects his poor wife because he is always away from home trying to secure a contract with a major client.

Of course the client is a mistress who is unaware that her lover is married.

When Georges' wife invites the `client' to the couple's villa, she shows up, not expecting to be met by her lover's wife. (I hope you're following this).

Added to this melee is a man on the run being hunted by a dithering detective, a completely over-the top homosexual and a loose moraled French maid.

In these sorts of farces the plot doesn't matter too much. We all know that somebody will be left in a compromising position with their trousers around their ankles, a secret lover will have to make a mad dash through the French windows, the butler will run off with the spinster aunt and so on. The point is that the situations provide plenty of opportunity for quick one-liners and plenty of laughter.

But while the plot of `Pajama Tops' might make an offer to deliver the goods, the script totally rejects it.

I think I chuckled a couple of times throughout the whole performance but basically it just wasn't funny. By the half time interval I honestly couldn't wait for it to end.

The cast didn't help. It was my understanding that the Jabulani Repertory Company is meant to be semi-professional -- it certainly didn't appear so from where I was sitting.

It's perhaps appropriate that Terri Tyrrell, playing the sexy French maid Claudine, has one of the willowiest figures I have ever seen -- on stage she was completely wooden.

Alistair Varton's French accent seemed to frequently disappear while Gaynor Gallant, as the coquettish Claudine, was totally unconvincing.

Keith Madeiros tried hard as the camp Leonard Jolijoli -- but perhaps too hard. In the end he just became a caricature of the late Kenneth Williams -- all flaring nostrils and limp wrists and very, very boring. (If you don't know who Kenneth Williams is just nip down to the House of Assembly and watch Shadow Tourism Minister David Allen delivering one of his rants -- you'll get the idea).

Kelvin Hastings-Smith and Zina Edwards were OK as Georges and his lover, Babette Latouche, but only in an Am Dram sort of way. All in all a very disappointing night out which, by the way, will cost you $25 a seat.

The evening wasn't a complete wash out. Once the curtain had come down I rushed to the bar for a well earned drink, only to be met by the velvet voice of LeYoni Junos, who was crooning her way through a selection of easy listening classics, beautifully accompanied by the moustachioed Vic Glazer on piano. Now that's entertainment.

Gareth Finighan THEATRE REVIEW THR REV