NOW I'D always been brought up to believe that Hasty Pudding Theatricals were somehow degenerate affairs, full of preppies done up in drag and nasty jokes about women and only the merest appearance of theater. I mean that's what I'd always been told. So, where is the raunchiness of yesteryear? This year's show, The Wrongway Inn by name and the Pudding's 124th production, may be set in a whorehouse on the eve of the Revolutionary War but deep down inside it's as red, white and blue as a slice of American Pie.

Not that I expect the show to get any rave notices around the Dunster House women's table. The Wrongway Inn never abandons the stock in trade of Pudding tradition--the puns, the double-entendres, and the female ingenue who goes around complaining that her "boobalas" aren't big enough. But it does do its best to downplay the leers. But it spectacle owes more to Gilbert and Sullivan, Yankee Doodle Dandy and 1776 than you might be prepared to expect.

Through it all, there weaves a plot of sorts. Will the English land secret shipment of snuff on Rhett O'Ricks dock? Will Rhett stay sober enough to that Miss Glory Morning can marry him? Will Johnny Profane remain true to Chaste DeBluesaway despite her miniscule breasts? Or will her father the Mayor foreclose the Wrongway Inn instead? Not quite the ideological origins of the American Revolution, to be sure.

In fact, I suspect that lyricist Barry Harman and composer Norman Siegel are only using the hoary old conventions of Pudding shows past (as well as the Theatricals' impressive $70,000 budget) to act out their own love affair with musical comedy. Siegel has come up with a nicely eclectic score--from a very G&S number like "Establishment" to a first act curtain entitled "Glory" that is straight out of Dolly or Mame. Harman's lyrics are generally up to the same par, although one or two ("Remember the Mania," "Sit Down and Take a Stand") seemed to me not far enough removed from the patriotic foot-stomping of a John Wayne television special for their own good. The show is not without its bland spots, though--particularly, the love duet "Patriotically Yours"--and there is one song, a lovely little lament for the trivia of fifties' childhood, that would look out out of place in all but the most winsome of entertainments.

WINSOME, The Wrongway Inn is not. Although the show is a bit too long episodic, director-choreographer Voight Kempson has injected a good deal of energy and brought off some splendid dance routines. The second-act kickline ("The Don't Tread-on-Me-Blues"--composer Stephen Sondheim seem's to have been the evening's guiding light) is a harlequin-outfitted Busby Berkely spectacular which has nothing at all to do with the plot and is probably all the better for it. As proper compliment to the direction, Franco Colavecchia has done a swell job of set design--his complicated arrangement of backdrops and scrims are like a series of Saul Steinberg New Yorker covers--and B. Allen Odom has contributed a witty display of costuming. Parmer Fuller's musical direction at moments approaches mere cocktail music (in which, the program claims, Fuller is well-versed), but is saved by Dean Herington's clever orchestrations.

The cast can both sing and dance--no small achievement. However, there's a certain needed element of farce that could be more in evidence than it is. On the male side of things, Peter Kellogg plays Johnny with appropriate ingenueity and Michael O'Hare is an authoritative enough Rhett (although he rather seems to disappear from the action during the show's second half). As Mayor DeBluesaway, Nick Wyman steals the show with imperious poise and a nimble baritone voice.

STEVE PETERMAN is his daughter Chaste; he carries it off quite deftly, too. Tom Wells, as Betay the local madam, is none too broad herself. Barry Harman uses his role as Miss Glory Morning to lead into a couple of quite accomplished dance routines. The role itself he tends to underplay--during his bedroom scene, he sounds more like Deborah Kerr swearing off tea and sympathy than the "whore with a heart of gold" he's supposed to be.

All that's really missing from Hasty Pudding No. 124 is the snickering naughtiness and outright burlesque of previous productions. And you know, I kind of miss 'em. Last year's show may have been offensive and tasteless, but this year's borders on the sentimental, and I'm not sure which is worse. In trading in their X-rating for a GF, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals may be becoming more of the threat than we've realized. I mean, who indeed would've thunk it, this kind of thing might end up giving propples a good name!