A Forum Affair

John Berman, David Javerbaum

Chip Rossetti

directed by Greg Minahan

at the Hasty Pudding

How do you review a Pudding show? There's not a lot to compare it to. The Pudding is a genre of its own; where else would 16 guys dress up in drag, spout scads of puns, vamp around stage for a couple of hours, and end up high-heeled and scantily clad, dancing in a kickline lifted straight out of Radio City?

Which is, of course, exactly what the cast of the Hasty Pudding The articles does in its 146th production, "A Forum Affair." This year's high-budget, high-priced extravaganza takes us to Ancient Rome, where the fraternities hold jeans and t-shirt parties and the royal spectators at the Colosseum sit in the Caesarean section. get it?

Ancient Rome--with a few side rips to Egypt--makes terrific fodder for Pudding material. If all else fails, after all, you can throw in a Roman numeral joke: "Take V," the taskmaster tells his crew. Or a hieroglyphic joke "Feather before squiggly line except after bird."

Because in addition to the vamping and crooning, the sexual innuendoes and the Wellesley jokes the Pudding is first and foremost about bad puns. That and anachronisms (look for an American Gladiators dumbbell and a Barney lunchbox). And meta references ("It's the best dialogue I've had since Scene Two." one character says).

"Plot?" That's just another Greek word.

To review the Pudding, then, you've go to take it for what it is. So: are the puns bad enough? In a word, yes. Are "the anachronisms fitting enough? "Is the Pope gonna be Catholic?" Are the vamps vamp enough? They do their high heels proud. Is the script meta enough? it you ask me, there's no such thing as too much meta. And my opinion counts, since "I'm the reviewer.

The script, by David Javerbaum '93, Chip Rossetti '93 and John S. Berman '95, is loosely, loosely, vaguely about intrigue and attempted murder in Ancient Rome and Egypt. Really, though, the would-be plot isn't much more than an excuse for a set of broadly drawn characters with funny names.

There's Claudia Wayop (Skip Sneeringer '94), who wants to make her boorish husband Crassus Canbee (J.C. Wolfgang Murad' 95) successor to Emperor Pompey Circumstance (Stephen P. Lucado' 94). (Claudia Wayop. Get it?)

There's Pompey's conservative sister, Electra publicans (Aaron R. Zelman '95), and her Yale-educated slave Lucinda Lipps (J.P. Anderson '95). (She's Yale-educated, and she's a slave Get it?) They scheme to get Electra's airheaded daughter, Caesonia Phase (Adam D. Feldman '95) interested in the would be successor to the Roman throne, nerdy Nero Sited (Thomas F. Giordano '96).

There's Nero's ravenous tutor, Plato Pasta (Berman), who's busy planning his ideal Republic "with room for everybody...except for them frigging Corinthians." There's Plato's love interest Medusa Pade (Andrew Burlinson '97), a love-starved gorgon with killer head of hair.

There's pro-consul Marc Anatomy (Thomas I. Parks '96), who travels to Egypt and falls in love with nymphomaniacal Queen Neferenuff (Michael A. Stone '95). There's Nefferenuff's court: tough Leda Uvdapak (Evan M. Sandman '96), pothead handmaiden Isis Melting (Harris Hartman '95), soothsayer Horace Cope (Mark H. Baskin '95), architect Ramses Pointakross (Mark R. Fish '94).

Oh, and there's the Egyptian eunuch, Nuttinkhumin (Jeremy S. Nye '94). Get it? Which means a neverending stream of Bobbittesque humor--no pun intended. Scheming to overthrow the Queen and take over his country, Nuttinkhummin announces, "I'll do to Egypt what I can't do to Egyptians." Get it?

Because there isn't much plot to speak of, the success of the Pudding depends on the actors' ability to make their one-dimensional characters consistently funny and interesting. Fortunately, through clever stage business and vocal skill, most of them are successful. Fish is hilarious as repetitive Ramses Pointacross.

"My brain is my womb," he announces oh-so-seriously. "It give birth--[insert popping sound]--to pyramids."

Berman, as Plato Pasta, perfect the dippy Italian a la "My Cousin Vinny." Nye finds a way to make his one-joke character seem almost wistful. Hartman, as spacey Isis Melting, sounds just like Janis from the Muppet Show, and convincingly spouts her Woodstock wisdom. "Love," she says, "means never having to say I don't love you."

Too much caricature, of course, can get a little tiresome. As Caesonia Phaze, Feldman does a good impression of the Delta Delta Delta girl from Saturday Night Live--but the Delta Delta Delta girl is pretty damned grating. and while consistency isn't the Pudding's strong suit, things ought to be out of place for a reason. When Plato talks like Joe Pesci, it works. But why several Roman characters have British accents is a mystery.

Of course, characters aren't everything; the success of the Pudding also depends on the music. The Pudding score follows the Chinese Restaurant Menu system of composition: one from column A. one from column B...the torch song, the love-duet, the Big Production Number At The End Of The First Act. The music, composed by Randall Eng '94, is competent with a few particularly memorable moments, which is about all you can expect when you're genre-hopping so frantically.

The lyrics, by Javerbaum, are consistently funny, and --surprise!--heavy on the puns. Especially clever is the revue of Romanized Broadway songs spoofing everything from West Side story to Grease to "XLII street," and for the gladiator rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." ("For it's chew, chew, chew on a person..")

A set of strong voices makes the most of the music. Burlinson, as Medusa Pade, Stands, out in a sweet doo-wop number, "On the Inside." He gets great back-up, too, from his crooning fellow Egyptians. One of them, sandman as Leda Uvdapak, shines on his own in the gospel song "Amazon Grace." Stone vamps nicely in the torch song " Ancient History," though the orchestra sometimes drowns him out. The bigger numbers, too, sound as good as they look.

Big, is, after, all the Pudding's raison d'etre.The Pudding is nothing if not a spectacle; if you're going to do drag, you might as well go all out. That means big costumes, big hair, big sets, big backdrops. Which wouldn't be possible without a Big Budget. Fortunately, the Pudding has a lot of rich friends.

The fantastic costumes, for example, aren't exactly culled from the A.R.T. racks. Nuttinkhumin's elongated hat adds the perfect touch to his skimpy eunuch suit; Lucinda Lipps and Isis Melting look positively female. Medusa Pade is exquisite in her "differently dyed" green skin and creepy nails, with a reptilian hairpiece that casts a mean shadow and golden snakes that twine around her chest.

In fact, the costumers in general do a nice job with...well, breasts. Leda Uvdapak wear a pyramid bikini top that is to-die-for. And Claudia Wayop's buxom bosom is a sight to behold.

The inventive set, too, cries out money, money, money. The scenery spans from the Roman court to an Egyptian crypt; the paint is lavish and the settings are clever. The Broadway backdrop advertises "Guys and Gauls," "Camel Lot," and "Lyre on the Roof." (Get it?) a few technical touches add just the right flair: an erupting Mt. Vesuvius and an electric scoreboard in the Colosseum ("Lions 1, Christians 0").

Though technically clean most of the time, the musical suffers unnecessarily at a few points. Music would come in handy during some of the silent, dragging scene changes. The spotlight could stand to slow down a bit; it gets dizzying during an Act I chase scene. And while we're on the subject of running...it's nice to make use of the whole theater, but when sweaty, panting men in drag periodically lumber up and down the aisles, it kind of detracts from the mystique.

The Pudding spectacle wouldn't be complete, of course, without its traditional kickline. Radio City Music Hall, remember? Which causes a bit of a dramatic dilemma: finding a reasonto get every actor out character and into a teeny-weeny kickline costume is admittedly tough.

But as contrived endings go, this one's little too contrived. Without giving away anything monumental, I'll just say it jumps fairly far into the future, and is preceded by a segment that s' out-and-out weird, even by Pudding standards.

Still, you've go to give these guys credit. How many women do you know who can walk in high heels without tottering, never mind dance to complex choreography? And how many men do you know who would don the heels, squeeze into costumes that would put RuPaul to shame, and still come out smiling?

Then again, they knew what they were getting into. It's the Pudding show, after all.

And when in Rome...

Joanna M. Weiss '94 was editorial chair of The Crimson in 1993. Traditionally, the outgoing editorial chair reviews the Pudding Show.