I GET NO KICK FROM CAMPAIGN

Through Oct. 13

Preface to Abstract Thoughts P>The 151st installment of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, I Get No Kick from Campaign, is, ironically enough, a kick. Not only that, it's all about kicking: kicking back and enjoying, cancan kicking and kickboxing. It is an entertaining romp through time (a choice sample including the signing of the Constitution and a presidential race of the near future). More spectacular than last year's production, but not as dazzling as the next's, the show follows the hearty base tradition of vaudeville.

To appreciate a show like the Hasty Pudding's, a grasp of the plot is merely a bonus, for its heart lies in the spectacle. Yet the writers, Greg Lau '99 and Ben Kaplan '99, nevertheless churn out a fashionably complex storyline (Go, Hasty Pudding! Don't stop giving!) filled with...

Abstract Thoughts

The crux of I Get No is the collapse of time. When an Elvis-impersonator bursts upon the founding fathers, we see the most realistic instance of time-space confuscation. "Elvis" escorts a dorky librarian to the future, where his mission is to prevent a militaristic presidential candidate from winning and fulfilling his alliance with a disco-dancing tele-evangelist by outlawing rock'n roll. They do so by transforming a stuttering barber-woman into the Cinderella candidate destined for victory. What follows is a synchronic allegory of post-revolutionary American history only thinly disguised as an innovative commentary on gender roles in the 90s. Each character represents an associative metonym in American history, grounded in the contiguity of time and space. Some even double as personifications of today's pressing issues (Go, Hasty Pudding!), such as xenophobia, international espionage, the religious right and the weather.

The Politics of a Sex Triangle

The dominant gender in a menage-a-trois relies on the subjugation of the third individual. Such an obvious rule is complicated by I Get's three-way freeway between Hal Elujah, Stella Virgin and Brook Werm. Two men, one woman? Three men? One man, two women (assuming that if women in the Hasty Pudding show are men, then men are women)? Stella Virgin (Robert Schlesinger '00) is a dangerously subversive character, a postmodern repetition of the much-parodied "White House intern" figure. Doused in blush and armed with a lolli (ta)pop, Schlesinger's cotton candy-cum-phallus act is not very sexy, but still a marked improvement over Monica.

Re-"Polly"ticization "of" Fantasy

When beautician Polly Tishun (Michael Kennedy '99) blooms from her stuttering shy-girl cocoon and becomes a sexy, successful presidential candidate, we not only see gender-bending acquire an occupational valence but also a post-feminist re-telling of the American teenager's Bildungsroman, embedded in a politicized pulp paradigm that we have not seen since the 60s (aka Celine Dion). Kennedy is fully aware of all the dimensions of his character but still manages to add symbolic layers even as he sheds tactile ones.

The Good "Camp"

Susan Sonntag writes that good camp constitutes a third aesthetic genre, right alongside the beautiful and the sublime. The good camp in this show is made up of Al Shookup (Seth Fenton '01), Brook Werm (Adam Green '99), Geri Atrick (Ben Forkner '01) and Elle Nino (Royd Chung '01). Two of them are from another time, the third will be as soon as she dies. The last one wants to work for CNN, hegemonic transducer of the dismaying current events that probably led From Campaign's writers to inscribe the good-guy roles onto characters from another time. Forkner's breasts hang low. Chung makes a bombastic zephyr. Fenton and Green magically fuse the camaraderie of the Lone Ranger and Tonto with the out-of-time bewilderment of Dorothy and Toto (they even bring a pair of ruby slippers, only in this case they are neither ruby nor slippers).

Cross-Speciation

As General Lee Aliar, Jason Mills '99 skillfully evades our sympathies--the moment he is threatened, he turns into a shell-shock poster child and begins writhing all over the floor. He turns into a worm. Furthering this redoubling of the gender-turn as species-turn, Bryan Leach '00 plays an anthropomorphic (albeit morphologically impaired [a la Rilke's Archaisicher Torso Apollos]) dog, a stereotypical Scotland Yard scrub, who's neutered jokes wear thin, to say the least. Also included in this category is Donatello Mywife (ably, even riotously, acted by Michael Roiff '01) because he is: a) Italian; and b) seemingly the genetic dregs of...let's just say his mother danced with wolves. Overall, this multiplication of identity axes is successful: again and again, the Hasty Pudding teaches us that differance is better.

Thespionage

Without a torturous spy subplot, a drag show is nothing. With one, it could be a dragnet show. International espionage, despite its tendency to climax in showdowns on top of skyscrapers, is eerily seductive--think Tom Cruise flailing like an insect in Mission Impossible, Harrison Ford in Patriot Games, Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls. Kick from showcases its espionage plot as a xenophobic triangle, with private eyes Katya Redhanded (Young Lee '99) and Newt Erd on the tail of Eiffel Over (Christian Roulleau '01), a breadbasket wearing, scent-spilling, card-carrying member of the HPT (Hairy Patriarchal Thespians). For the resident woman in red (she's got the real ruby slippers.), Lee does not ooze the carnality of--say--Carmen Sandiego, on whom his character is obviously based.

Amidst all the hubbub and shaved body parts, Roulleau quietly steals the show as helpless romantic Eiffel. With his searching blue eyes and soft-on-the-ears pseudo-accent, Roulleau simmers and bubbles into, well, a frothy soufflé. To continue the gastronomic slant this paragraph has taken, the entree of the day is Freida O'Pressed (Krishnan Unnikrishnan '02), a yummy morsel of spicy, tart and savory sweetness.

De-lconization of Jesus Through Dance and Telecommunications

No subject is too sacred for the men of the HPT, who yearly tackle thorny issues of the day. Erik Amblad '99 assumes the controversial and theologically challenging role of the Reverend Hal Elujah, who must sell the word of God in disco-rhyme from a pulpit of rhinestones--undergoing a casually hidden, usually Russian and sexually appealin' internal drama in the process. If the body is a temple, there is a doctor in the room, and Elvis left the building, then Jesus brought the house down.

Power to the Pudding

Oh, what a thought-provoking ode to bubble-gum history! What arms, what legs! But one thing still bothers us...

It's not art.

But it's a scream, baby.