All the Queen's Men

THE Empress Catherine of Russia had a passion for almost anything that could fit in her boudoir. That (and she) took in quite a lot, but the insatiable sovereign nevertheless beat it down to the stables where, when the grooms gave out, she dallied with the dobbins. (She met her death, they say, while mounting a horse in a somewhat unusual fashion.)

They say it (or the like) again and again in Hasty Pudding Theatricals No. 120. "All the Queen's Men" is as exuberant and flashy as ever, with an even snappier score than one has a right to expect from HPT, but the usual tastelessness has this year been joined with witlessness. The book is a sloppy pastiche of Audio Lab ads. It bites.

The albatross was hatched by George Birnbaum and Joshua Rubins, porcine roommates who look like they sat around Quincy House giggling over lines like, "The best is yet to come...and I want to be there when he does." Rubins fared somewhat better with the lyrics.

His best is "Odessa," a pleasant little soft-shoe routine between illicit lovers Basil (David Paterson) and Studella (Nick Clark).

No one bothers to act in one of these things, but Paterson and Clark ham it up nicely throughout, Roger Kozol as Boris a little more nicely, and David Foster (Kate's irremediably ugly Nanny) best of all. Kate herself (Frank Reece) pants well and is contagiously eager, though a singer she's not.

Neither is Hotiana (Paul Mancusco), and with a vengeance. Hot is Kate's rival for the favors of a village mailman, and when she pleads, sounding like a duck in heat, for "Nothing But Him," it not only obscures the merits of the song but leaves a faint prickly sensation in the ears. Her briefer wishing-well plea for Joe is hysterical.

Prentice Claflin, as the puckish lush Ivan the Knife, swaggers, slobbers, and leers risibly. Hotiana's Jo (Peter Gilbert) on the other hand maintains the stony-faced good humor of a vacuum cleaner salesman reciting the merits of a Hoover.

Director-choreographer Billy Wilson has made the best of a bad book with pacing sufficiently breathless to keep the audience from dozing off between songs. It's lucky, because the score is splendid. "Lover Number One," "The Jewels of the Crown," and "I'm Gonna Get My Man," are finely crafted showtunes. "The Early Bird Gets the Worm" got the kickline so carried away that one of the would-be sex kittens lost his head piece (he recovered the hair deftly, though he needn't have bothered; his own was long enough!

As always, it's a gaudy spectacular, with lush costuming and flashy sets (though lights were changed with distinctly audible clicks last night.)

HPT authors are always willing to settle for a handful of shameless titters from the audience ("Clint, honey, what was the idea of that crystal ball?" "Guffaw, guffaw!"), but this year's were content with less. I saw them shoveling it in at a lunch for Angela Lansbury last week, telling someone they'd been sitting on the script for nearly a year. It shows.