A French Quiche

ESPECIALLY AT the Pudding.

No one needs more bad news--the President said today the Grenadians--the Grenadians!--are spreading subversion throughout our very own continent the Supreme Court is a drug abuse outpatient clinic, crime is up. I'm down.

The Pudding show is up that means good news and happy people Very happy! On opening night Last night the happiness began flowing at the cocktail parts among the fuses and sequins assembled for champagne and benedictine in the trees veritas dining room on the second floor. An early arrival whispered about the festivities to come. "I mean gala gala," while a woman discussed a reunion she just had. "He was walking on the Champs Elysees this summer and we just ran into each other. And now here he is."

It was honest my very first Pudding show. Never having arisen from my splendiferous langour early enough to get tickets before the inevitable sell-outs. I missed not only the legendary opening nights and kick lines but also the less than legendary second nights and third night and soon. So the Pudding show has the same kind of serenity that Harvard does, things may change the Grenadians come and go--but the Pudding show, so I'm told stays the same. Oh, they change the title every year, and they rearrange the puns, but the boys keep dressing up like girls and a fine time is had by all.

Sealed With a Quiche, the Pudding's most recent installment of Holyoke Street's (and possibly America's) longest ongoing tradition concerns the efforts of one French lass to solicit a British nobleman--the some-time super-hero Captain Comic--and save her father from death at the hands of the rebelling masses. That's insurgent guerrillas, in modern parlance. It should be noted, if not too carefully, that the past two pudding shows have dealt with the theme of peasants rising up against their masters. And in both the masters fight them off to triumph in the end. Looks like a bit of status anxiety on the part of the aristocrats in ye olds class struggle--yesh, but leave such thoughts, while they may bring lumpen to the throats of the proletariat, for the porcelain throne and Social Studies tutorials.

What the people want is singing and dancing, and so, they will have in Sealed With a Quiche. Plenty of dancing at least. Regarding the singing, I'll have to take the program's word for much of it. The problem, you see, is that with a couple of notable exceptions, the songs in this production couldn't make it over the formidable wall of sound imposed by the almost too capable orchestra. And that is a shame, because Michael Schubert--yes, that wonder kind of the past three Pudding scores--has produced a most tuneful score, with just the right mix of dance numbers, love songs (of sorts) and punny quickies. Maybe I am going deaf, but I heard--and I suspect this to be true for others--only a few of those clever lyrics.

Not that you could tell from the response the audience gave punctuating the performance with rapid-fire pops of champagne corks, and yells to roommates on stage. There was enthusiastic cheering for almost any reason, and quite often no reason at all. Yessir, the proof (about 110) was in the Pudding last night. Some of that approval was deserved--especially by the night's two, terribly underutilized heroes.

Michael Rapposelli as Ma Belle, mother of the English noble hero nearly stops the show each time he opens his mouth. He plays the buxom mom (this year, it's Mae-West-Goes-to-Brooklyn), and Rapposelli milks the show's best part for all it's worth. What's more, his stage presence carries over to his singing, with a superb voice that resounds throughout his all-too-infrequent songs.

Similarly, Terry Ray Robinson as Toby O'Nottobee has a strappling and graceful character that tends to embarrass many of the more wooden folks around him. He, too has a singing voice you can hear--particularly in the show's best number. "Rain of Terror" Robinson's dazzling song-and-dance accompanied by a nifty trumpet solo by William Saleeby, makes as all-the-more painful contrast with the clinkers that surround it.

BUT NO ONE wants complaints. They'd rather hear puns for which the Pudding show is justly famous. A sampler:

"I bet she'd relish being sandwiched by him."

"That's a rye comment."

"I'd like to pump her nickel ... "

"I was pure as the driven snow--then I drifted ... "

"Captain, you sure hold your own."

"I won't have to once I marry your daughter."

We are not talking subtle.

By the second act (better of the two), last night's assembly had degenerated into its own big party. As Lord Basil Decongestant and Lady Wilmaslipshow cavorted on stage, be-fogged alums and sotted students groped with one another, threw rice and generally had a hell of a time. So what if they couldn't hear Captain Comic, aka Lord Clark of Kent, aka Chad Hummel or even less from Ophelia Thise, played by Michael Anderson, who is mirable dictum, president of Hasty Pudding Theatricals. And may be there did seem to be two too many dancers on the stage all the time. Who, after all, really cares?

Not me, I just wanted to--and did--have a nice time. Why else would anyone go to a Pudding show. Maybe we're all whistling past the graveyard, watching all the loveable aristos thwart those gnarly peasants. Never will you see a group of people more determined to have a good time than at opening night at the Pudding. By the end they are desparate for the traditional kick-line. They erupt when the hairy legs finally start pumping.

"It's Ash Wednesday today, "one woman said, "Isn't it?"

"Well, kind of, "her friend said.