Moments before he stepped onstage as Sid, the hunky leading man in The Pajama Game, lawyer Jonathan Peck realized he faced a unique kind of double jeopardy.
Peck, a mass tort litigator with Patton Boggs LLP in Newark, knew that the audience at NJPAC’s Victoria Theater was packed with colleagues, adversaries, clerks, paralegals—and a number of august types usually addressed as Your Honor.
“You can mentally lose it if you think, All these judges are there, people I could be appearing in front of,” he admits.
As Peck mentally managed his blood pressure, his co-star, Millville attorney Lauren Van Embden, 27, coped with her own jitters. A trim ingénue soprano with a Colgate smile, she had applied her stage make-up early to help her get into her character, Babe. Plunking herself down at the piano in the still-empty theater, she accompanied herself through her vocal warm-ups. Then she returned to her dressing room as the sold-out house filled up, and did yoga and deep breathing to steady her nerves.
Van Embden actually has more experience acting than lawyering. She passed the New Jersey bar in 2006 and the New York bar in late 2007, and has been working in her father’s practice, focusing on real estate law. But she has performed regularly since she was seven years old. Like her, Peck starred in shows in high school and college. He also is the drummer in a rock band that played last summer at the Stone Pony. Yet this would be his first time performing musical theater in a decade.
Any lawyer will tell you there’s an art to advocacy. But the September gala at NJPAC, called A Celebration of Lawyers in the Arts, turned the idea around. Produced by the New Jersey Law Journal, the evening raised almost $45,000 for New Jersey Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (njvla.org), which connects artists and arts groups in need of legal representation with pro bono attorneys.
The term “legal talent” took on new meaning that night. In the third floor rotunda, guests took in an exhibit of painting, drawing, and sculpture by Garden State attorneys, many of whom stood smiling besidetheir work, hoping, for once, to be deposed.
Meanwhile, during a catered dinner in the lobby, the term “bar band” was redefined by a jazz combo featuring Roseland litigator Nicholas Stevens on guitar and Julien X. Neals, chief municipal court judge of Newark, on electric bass and vocals.
No legal proceeding is complete without a delay of some kind, so it was only fitting that The Pajama Game didn’t start on time as people schmoozed toward the auditorium. Finally, director and musical director Rozanne F. Sullivan of Upper Saddle River (a theater professional and former lawyer) gathered the cast for a pep talk as the onstage orchestra of lawyers warmed up.
Positions! Curtain!
The lights went up, revealing the Sleep Tite pajama factory, its disgruntled workers contemplating a strike. The seamstresses tease Babe, head of the grievance committee, that she’s falling for Sid, the superintendent. She denies it, giving Van Embden her first big song, “I’m Not At All In Love.” But Sid is already smitten, setting up Peck’s soliloquy, “Hey There.”
“That song means a lot to me because the words are just wonderful,” Peck, a 34-year-old Hoboken bachelor, said later. “It’s about a basic human experience—‘She’s got you dancing on a string.’”
Everything went boffo. “It’s exhilarating to know you’ve got people on the edge of their seats,” said Carl L. Marshall, 40, an Elizabeth municipal judge who played the cameo role of Max the salesman.
The cast had spent many summer week-ends rehearsing, usually in a Montclair church basement. On Fridays, Van Embden left Millville before 3 pm and drove three hours to rehearsals. She learned her lyrics by listening to a CD in her Hyundai.
Peck was up to his eyeballs in work—preparing his firm’s senior partner for oral argument in a case and writing a brief in the same matter for the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York. “Sometimes I’d show up at rehearsals completely frazzled,” he says.
Near the end of Act One, Sid and Babe finally kiss. The audience, Peck recalls, “began hootin’ and hollerin’ like it was the Jerry Springer show!” So much for decorum.
At a party that night at a nearby Irish pub, cast and crew did their own hootin’ and hollerin’. Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter O’Malley, who played Vernon the nerdy efficiency expert, pointed out that musical training helps you project your voice. Carl Marshall figured he already had the best of both worlds. “As a municipal court judge,” he said, “I act every night before a captive audience!”