The Only Way To Do It Right...

WHOEVER DECIDED to put on this show in the dead of night must have 0intended it to be seen as a frothy little nightcap, a light aperitif after a long evening of more substantial diversion. But whoever it was, he or she was wrong. Not that running a show at midnight is a bad idea--on the contrary, it's godsend for dedicated theatergoers who want to pack in two productions a night. It's just that this show is so good it must almost inevitably become the piece-de-resistance of any evening's entertainment, making whatever came before pale in comparison.

And what makes the show even better is the fact that this 90-minute concoction of songs and skits is all home-cooked, so to speak--virtually all the authors are Harvard-connected, and all but two of those are undergraduates. The numbers that get the biggest laughs and seem to ring the truest are, not surprisingly, the ones that involve Harvard in-jokes. "Dean Epps' Love Song" by Philip LaZebnik, a mishmash of double talk that praises love as a viable alternative, somehow sounds funnier than it really is, but "Caesar's Wife" by Peter Homans and Bill Johnsen, which has a whining Sissela Bok complaining about all those cocktail parties and privately longing to be married to "a Brutus," is right on the mark. "Tarts of the Arts"--by Paul Rosenberg and Ted Trimble--takes its cue from a familiar situation--a jaded senior, unable to find inspiration in his term paper, thinks back to "that night four years ago in Greenough" when three sleazy muses wrapped in feather boas slinked into his room to ask provocatively, "In the mood for some...conceptualization?... Wanna...toy with some ideas?"

But the sketch that raises the Harvard in-joke to a true comic art form comes from a surprising source in this student-written show--Paul Cantor, assistant professor of English. "Let's Make the Grade" is a game show hosted by a bouncy emcee named Sever Hall and featuring prizes like a year's supply of A papers and admission to a graduate school of your choice. The first contestant, one Mary Sue Literati, starts out trading her admission letter to Yale for the surprise behind Door Three--which turns out to be admission to a selective concentration, History and Literature of Science, a department that "will deepen your understanding of Western man and still get you into med school."

But to imply that you have to know the ins and outs of Harvard to enjoy this show would certainly be a mistake--most of the numbers transcend any specific time or place, and would stand up well in a professional theater anywhere. The fact that the quality of the material is so consistently high is remarkable, considering there are about a dozen authors involved, and the few sketches that do drag--particularly in the second half of the show--might look better if they weren't in such brilliant surroundings. One problem is that because the tone of the show is overwhelmingly comic, the three or four serious, romantic songs that sneak in are a little jarring--you're kind of waiting for the punch line and feel silly when it doesn't come. But these numbers are all so good in themselves--particularly John Spritz's "Out There," a sad and realistic tale of two people who should get together but just miss the connection--that they deserve to be included.

The six-member cast is as consistently dazzling as the authors, each actor displaying the versatility necessary to make a revue of this sort work. All six have lovely voices and fine ears for comic nuance, but if anyone stands out among this talented group it is Sarah McCluskey, who has a sense of timing that can wring the maximum possible amount of laughter out of any joke.

So whatever you're doing at 11:30, drop it and go see Do It Yourself. You may never have a chance to see it again, and this is one show that should not be missed. The Harvard Premiere Society, an organization devoted to the production of student-written productions, and the group that sponsors this show, has proven its invaluable worth--this material is much too good to be left lying on a desk in a Harvard suite somewhere, unproduced and unacclaimed.