A Hit and A Myth

What mind can compass, what tongue relate the baroque doings which surround a Hasty Pudding opening--that manic cross between a mid-ocean gala and a run on the bank? The searchlights, the celebrities, the spilled drinks, the crowd's frenzied yelps of mutual recognition: the scene suggests unwitting passage into a claustrophobe's vision of the Apocalypse.

On stage, another sort of anarchy is going on, the kind that can exorcise those suppressed fantasies of rape, murder, and pillage, which have made you dull and out of sorts all winter. This year the anarchy is called "A Hit and a Myth," and I can think of no one who doesn't need to see it at least once.

Everything, in fact, is as it should be with this production: the sets (by Ivers and Johnson) are painted and lit with colors generally associated with customized cars. The well-paced book (by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman) is unabashedly outrageous. The songs (with lyrics by Stephen Kaplan and music by Messrs. Larson and Levin) are bouncy and euphoric. The orchestra is quite the best I've ever heard at the Pudding, and the direction (by the all-knowing Billy Wilson) is greased lightning.

Based tenuously on the Atalanta and Hippomenes story, "A Hit and A Myth" is set in the "Ancient Greek city-state of Beotia," a debt-ridden parcel of backwater real estate ruled by that most amiable of tyrants, Tenintius (Stuart Beck). The King is trying to auction off his daughter, Atalanta (George Denny), to any one of a number of suitors, and right now the smart money's on a wealthy young Spartan, Hippomenes (Rich Hammond), who's so good looking that even the Vestals paw his tunic.

Poor Atalanta. She doesn't want to marry anybody, ever. She doesn't even want to stay at the College of Vestal Virgins, as the Dean (Nick Whitlam) keeps urging. No, Atalanta wants to be a famous athlete, and most any day you'll find her practicing the various track and field events she plans to enter in the next Olympiad.

What is a father to do, muses Tenintius as he disconsolately fondles a slave girl, his heart heavy and his country destitute. Cloud-borne, the answer descends heavily from the grid. The goddess Diana (Anthony Fingleton) has landed in Beotia. As it turns out, the goddess of chastity, and the moon ("Would you like to see why?"), can't find any takers on Olympus. She's come to earth to correct all that. "People," she sings philosophically, "are better than nothing."

Now a goddess could clear up the minor personality adjustments so necessary to effect a union between the sportive Atalanta and her Lacedaemonian lad, and the ever-permissive Diana is perfectly prepared to sling a miracle or two in the aid of a good cause. The problem is the goddess's designs on King Tenintius himself. One glimpse at Fingleton's magnificent visual characterization of Diana--he looks precisely like one of the more grotesque 19th century caricatures of Britannia--and you understand the unfortunate monarch's dilemma.

Stu Beck is another standout. Whether all but eating two fantastically pornographic slave girls in "Don't Forget Your Sugar Daddy," or prancing through a rather uninspired ditty called "Daughter and Dad," which he and Denny transform into a formidable show-stopper, Beck epitomizes that antic self-congratulation which is the hallmark of a Top Banana.

But best of all on opening night was Nick Whitlam as the head Vestal, a booming games mistress who almost, but not quite, succeeds in establishing military discipline over her violent sexual frustrations. With a technique born of fastidious hard-sell he leads the chorus through the show's finest numbers, You're Only A Virgin Once and the kick line, Love Me, Love My Cult. Here, Steve Kaplan's lyrics, by the by, are all things wonderful, and one forgives and forgets his occasional carelessness in other parts of the production.

A Pudding show, by definition, allows for and even capitalizes on its numerous shortcomings. Only when the proceedings stop is it in trouble. For that reason, while saluting the urge which produced them, I have to register objection to three attempts to make legitimate this joyfully bastard show: the self-conscious counterpoint of the "Like You Like It" reprise; the weak, semi-serious ballad, "Is It Really Me"; and the tedious choreography of Pan's Dance, which wastes the considerable talents of Director Wilson and dancer Ron Porter.

Still, comedy on the Harvard stage is usually marked by preciosity or an ill-gauged lunge for "style." The Pudding show is a welcome reminder of a tradition which began with masked clowns swinging their leather genitalia and beating each other with inflated pig bladders. On opening night, harsh and unrepentant laughter filled the Pudding clubhouse. That kind of laughter is savage, purgative, and beautiful beyond all telling of it.