Tickle Me Pink

It is disquieting to be pulled suddenly out of the middle of a thesis and sat down in the middle of a Pudding Show. The change is noticeable, although both are known to be Institutions, and there are usually only two straightforward reactions to Institutions. One may glorify their endurance for time out of mind, or indulge in socialist polemic against them.

But they soon came on, oddities clothed in bright costumes, topical puns, and sly sexual allusions, and the temptation to classic reactions crept away. For this Pudding Show is fun, and more; it is showy, noisy, full of gaiety and brass. It is often witty. It is even a little socialistic, because the hero is the liberal Senator Hale N. Hardy, who has asked a troupe of Crimean dancers to widen the cultural scope of his native Booster (a not bad piece of Russian leaping and stomping gets going at the finish). Alas; the dancers, being ideologues, are not welcomed by Jordan Marsh (the wealthy fiance of Hardy's daughter, Wholsa) or by Pansy Pineherse (Hardy's old flame) and her clutch of reactionary flower-gardeners. The ladies decide to call in a one-man Senate investigating committee, Sea-bigot Colder, to drive the dancers out; this amiable demagogue tries in the process to indict Senator Hardy for not fulfilling a government fertilizer (wonderful stuff for a certain sort of joke) contract. At the same time Wholsa falls out with Marsh, and in with the Crimean Igor Beevor; Pansy's son Andy out with a love of medicine and in with the seductive ballerina Katerina Artburnova; and eventually, Pansy out with Senator Colder and back in with Senator Hardy. Reunions, reprises, finale.

Yor can see that the names, which are hardly subtle ones, and the plot seem to lead to an insipid book cluttered with the no doubt essential references to Kennedy family gags and Soviet impulses to claim all inventions as their own. So they often do. Carter Wilson, who wrote the book, wants to make an invariably temperate and reasonable liberal under fire sound exciting, a difficult job, and Geoffrey Platt struggles hard to spread his unruly paste of comedian's chatter far enough to fill out a major role. Platt is clever, but he can't do it.

Still, none of this matters really. There is excitement enough in Tickle Me Pink to give the audience as well as the chorus line a good time. Wilson also helped Nicholas Bunnin write the lyrics, and somehow they produced a combination of all the sounds that the best Pudding wenches can roll with a lovely, drawn out salaciousness off the tongue, including some truly catchy ditties--"The Red Star Is Rising," "Logrolling," and "Body by Fisher" especially. The music is Brian Cooke's and Kenneth Stuart's; only occasionally the conventional hammering accompaniment, it certainly got the largest share of talent in the production. Flexible, dramatic, tuneful, the descriptive words steal the actual flavor; anyway, it pulls together a show that would be limp with anything less. A small band plays it, led by the now notorious Joe Raposo at the piano; and you should watch the workings of Raposos face instead of the stage during the dull moments of a first act someone stretched out too long.

I wonder how these directors can draw so wide a range of wiggle, giggle, and grind out of their females; this director, David Tihmar, has done it splendidly. Pansy (Nicholas Little-field) does a "Slow Twist" which sends all her manufactured hipbones into excruciatingly mock-suggestive spins and slides; Ben Mason as Wholsa Hardy adds a presumably affectionate and completely successful leer to her most innocent remarks; and Toby Walker, if he is not exactly of the Bolshoi, knows both how to spring about and to adopt the listless, tragic pose of the Artburnover at the same time as she seduces Andy by constantly escaping his embrace. That is versatility; all three of them have lots of it. The minutewomen, four of them, are tediously talky when left to themselves, but as soon as Pansy takes control of them they can posture brilliantly, particularly Charles Pierce. The males are predictably less impressive, but I liked John Powel's hearty, sweaty, and altogether pleasant Andy, and the Russians, who are satisfactory stock Russians. The Shadyrests, by the way, Joseph Bright and Walter Cannon as two appealing irrelevancies, are delightful.

One thing disturbs me (did it disturb the Pudding alumni who sat wonderingly through remarks about current provincialisms like psilocybin pie?) That is Tickle Me Pink's theme of horror. "Don't Let Them Dance" sings a dreary chorus to the badly frightened Hardy: and Act II opens with Hardy's nightmare, in which shadowy figures point accusation at him, and dance around him in hysterical, threatening circles. It is the symbolism of Duerenmatt and not of the Hasty Pudding; why is it here, among the chorus girls, invading the laughing air?