Charmed I'm Sure

The Wellesley junior show is basically a Hasty Pudding show with girls. Complete with slapstick and jokes. It haphazardly weaves back and forth across the thin line between childishness and delightful nonesense.

Charmed I'm Sure is apparently in classic tradition of class plays. Carried by a trivial plot the production at times meanders meaninglessly. But that, of course, is totally irrelevant. The dancing is exuberant and chaotic and therefore perfect. It is reminiscent of rally day at summer camp.

Roughly speaking, the story is about a civic committee led by a master crook which is trying to bring about "progress." A mansion peopled by a trio of spinsters with highly suspect hobbies stands in the way of progress, and must, of course, be removed.

Since the ladies feel their "roots" are in the house, they are rather reluctant to yield and put up stiff resistance. It is never clear whether or not they win, but the "Grandiose Finale" assures us that right and justice have, indeed, prevailed.

This story is obviously too frail to carry the show, but the music saves it, magnificently. Marcia Ramsey is the lady responsible for several of the excellent songs. The tunes do not commit the sin of great originality but they do have an appealing freshness (Harvardmen would be advised, however, to attend the show with a Wellesley date who can translate some of the more escoteric in jokes).

Although based on standard and sometimes tired jokes, the songs often had last night's audience roaring with laughter. Particularly successful were "Bureaucracy Calypso," a slap at modern urban government, "Living in the Twilight," which describes the life of the gangster associated with government and has suspicious echoes of West Side Story, and the "Accusatory Bop," a wild rock 'n roll bit in the grand style.

Best of all, though, was a song of modern social protest. At one point in his campaign to swing public opinion against the reluctant spinsters, the civic leader enlists the support of some collegiate picketers who are suffering from the "Age-of-Anxiety Blues." Distressed that "Jim Baldwin said kid you gotta take a stand, but Ole Miss has opened and the bomb has been banned," the Wellesley-Brandeis-Radcliffe collection of demonstrators complain that "Sartre said kid you gotta decide/but how can I determine the essence inside?"

In the middle of the picket line stands a blond, moppy haired Harvard preppy-identified to Wellesley girls by silverware in the jacket pocket and tie askew.

Some of the cutest girls were, unfortunately, anonymously placed in the chorus groups, but other, not so sexy and sophisticated, were superb any way. Martha Manapace as the Crook, Mary Hoag, a JFK-accented aide, and Elizabeth Kennedy, a maid from Massachusetts trying to "get class," were exceptional.

At the end of last night's performance, the curtain became stuck and almost refused to come down. No one in Alumnac Hall wanted it to hurry.