Princess Graces Loeb With Poetry

In a rare American stage appearance, Princess Grace Grimaldi of Monaco, accompanied by Richard Pasco of the Royal Shakespeare Company, gave a reading of poetry and prose last night at the Loeb Drama Center.

Today's matinee show marks the end of the former movie star's week-long tour of the United States. The Princess has not performed in America since 1956.

The program, entitled "Birds, Beasts and Flowers," was compiled by John Carroll, and included over 60 selections on the theme of nature. Proceeds from the tour will benefit the World Wildlife Fund, an international preservation organization.

Douglas Schwalbe, managing director of the Loeb, yesterday described the Princess' trip to Cambridge as "a low-key visit. We just took the position that it's a regular event in the series," he said.

Other Loeb personnel disagreed with Schwalbe's description of the visit. "People never got this nervous for any other show," Acha Lord '79, a technician at the Loeb said yesterday afternoon. "This is just an enormous freak-out."

Lord said that because the princess is "allergic to everything, you can't smoke in front of her, no flowers in the dressing room, only bottled water to drink."

"She's beautiful--stunning, and really terribly nice," Schwalbe added.

The princess lunched at the Faculty Club yesterday after arriving in Boston at around 2 p.m.

She plans to attend a benefit for the Boston Ballet Company tonight, Schwalbe said.

Tickets for today's 2 p.m. matinee are still available. "Eye-Opener" tickets are on sale this morning at the Loeb box office between 9 and 10 a.m., and rush tickets will be put on sale ten minutes before the show.

President Bok held an informal private reception for the Princess after last night's reading.

Lucky Guy

The reception was "more for the Princess than for gawkers or People Magazine groupies," Kerry L. Konrad '79, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, said yesterday.

Konrad, one of the three undergraduates invited, said, "I've been studying my Amy Vanderbilt all day. I'd rather meet Caroline, but I guess she's engaged," he added.