IMAGINE AN ENCHANTED CASTLE IN A FOREST. A PRINCESS WITH A "HAMLET COMPLEX." AN EVIL QUEEN CONNIVING TO KILL THE KING. A LOVE POTION, AND A KING AND QUEEN OF FAIRIES. AND IMAGINE 16 MEN IN DRAG, SINGING IN FALSETTOS. THAT'S WHAT YOU'LL SEE IN THE UPCOMING STAGE PRODUCTION ROMANCING THE THRONE, WHICH MAY BE THE MOST AMAZING HASTY PUDDING SHOW EVER.
The play's student authors, Nell D. Benjamin '93, Mark O'Keefe '93 and Larry O'Keefe '91 have drawn on varied sources to create his fairy tale, which will be staged in February of next year. Romancing the Throne is a "comedy of 'manors'" that the Hasty Pudding Theatricals will eventually take on the road to New York and Bermuda.
"It's a puckish satire," Benjamin says of the play, which has elements of Renaissance drama, political comment and such Pudding traditions as the 'punrun,' anachronisms and time manipulation. Mark O'Keefe calls the show "more realistic," and adds that it is "a more sensitive or sympathetic treatment of women than in the past, if that is even possible."
O'Keefe cautions, "You have to be careful about how you call this a "play." I think that one of the strengths of what we've written is the fact that in it's own right it is a real musical comedy that incorporates certain traditions into it." He also notes that this year's script has been a "dramatic exercise" rather than a "writing exercise" as in the past.
A CAST OF CHARACTERS
ALL THREE ARE PUDDING INSIDERS. NELL BENjamin has been assistant stage manager and stage manager for the last two Pudding shows. Mark O'Keefe participated in the cast of last year's Pudding production Up Your Ante. "It was definitely interesting" says Benjamin, "to write the script as an insider."
Mark O'Keefe said that he would very much like to be in this year's production. "I had just the best time last year [doing Up Your Ante,] but I'm also a second semester senior and I'm going to have to make a decision about it pretty soon."
"In terms of money, time and space," the annual Hasty Pudding Show is "the closest that student theater gets to professional at Harvard," says Benjamin. "At the A.R.T., you come out feeling that you have all these wonderful facilities, but you need permission to use them. [Working under the A.R.T ] is like being in day care." In fact, the annual Pudding show has a professional director, choreographer, music director, conductor and costume designer--and a professional handles the props as well.
Nell Benjamin is the archetypal Harvard super achiever. She is an English concentrator with the kind of G.P.A. most people only dream about, and she is currently writing her thesis on Renaissance Drama. In just over six semester, she has acted in seventeen plays and two student movies at Harvard--in total, she has spent at least 1500 hours in rehearsal and performance! And that does not count the time she spends performing with the improvisational theater group "On Thin Ice," of which she is president, or in her role as president of the Dunster House Drama society.
A NEW MAJOR?
GIVEN HER ENDURING INTEREST IN THE DRAmatic arts, I asked her whether she rued the fact that Harvard does not possess a Drama major. "I like the fact that there is no drama major as such. It means you can get more of a liberal arts education. Personally, I would not want an undergraduate degree in drama, and Harvard doesn't really seem the place to go for a [degree in] drama, although I suppose that could change, because we certainly have all the resources.
"But it certainly is nice to know that you don't have to major in [drama] to get [extensively] involved in it and to be dedicated to it. There are people I know who put in as much time into [drama] as any concentrator would. It would be nice, though, if courses like the dramatic arts courses counted for more. It is very hard to get them to count for concentration credit even if you're an English major," she says.
Larry O'Keefe seems to agree: "I think that if there was a major in drama there would be a lot more segregation between the people who do it for fun and people who do it because it's what they study. In retrospect, I don't think I would have opted for a drama major either, although I was all for it at that time. Harvard makes you find some real substance in a liberal arts major in addition to doing drama. The bad thing is that a lot of people graduate from Harvard expecting to be actors, but with no training. They're much smarter than actors in the real world, they're much more interesting people. There are a lot of [professional] skills that [Harvard graduates] are not taught...how to audition, how to deal with people in power...."
Larry studied anthropology at Harvard and is presently a graduate student at the Berklee College of Music where he is studying film scoring. A Krokodilo and a serious actor while at Harvard, he says that it was the Pudding that helped him realize his potential for compositional music. Now he wants a career in composing music. It is natural, however, that he should want to compose for shows and movies.
He says that drama has always fascinated him, in high school and at Harvard. "Well, to me, drama is just the most fascinating of all the arts...it seems the perfect way to combine all the other arts, visual and audio. I don't know if it has to do with investigating characters. There is a great deal of stock that is set on historical characters. I mean, everyone will turn out to audition for Romeo, King Lear, Iago...it's a good ego boost but it's also tremendous fun.
