Jurisimprudence

SEVERAL YEARS BACK, a certain Harvard College freshmen made the brave decision to abandon his past and find himself for real. He looked first among campus singing groups but soon left to try crew, where he was assessed as something less than Olympic material. The obvious next step? Set design. Within a few months this persistent fellow if it big on the House drama circuit, and his first major production was to have been the annual Law School show.

Working under a casual agreement with the legal thespians, our eager beaver poured his soul into those props and eagerly awaited the fame and fortune he deserved. As usual, the show was a flop, and to make matters worse, the neophyte craftsman was apparently told to take a hike without any pay because he hadn't signed a contract. Those Harvard Law students know how to drive a hard bargain.

And that pretty much says it all about this year's Law School extravaganza. Summery Proceedings. There's certainly no evidence that anyone's screwed the set designer this year, but the theme remains, as always, the potentially deleterious effects of legal education on otherwise decent people. And for the umpteenth consecutive winter, no one from outside the Law School community will find the show at all entertaining.

WHAT THE LAW SCHOOL drama mavens are obsessed about getting across is that they know that some of their buddies are already money-grubbing, amoral bastards fortunate enough to have landed on the express bus to corporate success. For instance, there's the character called Will Street: brawny, good hearted, always ready with a joke. Law school teaches him to see very country meadow as a shopping mail and each grassy hillside as a self-sufficient condominium community. Or take Eustace Shrub, who always wanted to be the star of a TV exercise show, but somehow ends up in cahoots with evil Professor Otto Savage, the student-hating arch-villain of this silly tale.

On the other hand, if you go to law school you will meet people who are equally concerned about grades and jobs but who resist temptation, care about progressive social causes and send to fall in love with all the grace of high school sophomores Led by cuddly Jim Ivey the goodness clash with the bandies at a surrealistic summer camp for prospective law students run by hip woman professor and her crew of 3L's. All the while, Ivey is romantic good gal Ruth O'Day, who (get this) finally comes around and sees that he's the guy for her.

So you don't go to the Law School show for high drama or for that matter for good singing or dancing. With the exception of Ken Hodder as the professor whose underwear must be too tight and Greg Martin, as the future real estate tycoon, this cast would get cut from most House productions. Several of the solo vocal numbers simply embarrass the audience as well as the performers. Actors (23 of em shuffle, awkwardly in huge packs on and off the stage toting Peanuts-style two-dimensional trees for the nature scenes and a dissipated desk and chair, which indicate action indoors. Dialogue drones endlessly, and the only truly witty exchange is a throwaway Samuel Beckett spoof, "Waiting for the Dough" though it's unclear how this two-minute diversion worked its way into the larger plot.

WHAT, THEN, DO people go to the Law School show for? They go for inside jokes, for allusions that seem so bland and obvious on the surface, that you've got to be an insider to enjoy them. Why the mere mention of Professor Duncan Kennedy's wardrobe provokes squeals of joy from the legal eagles. And there's the food at the Hark (yuck!), and the Section Three (whatever that is, it must be a riot, and that killer of a punch line. "Even Archie Cox has his off days.") That's Archie Cox--the professor. A traditional crowd favorite is the parading of a few real-life Law School characters across the Pound Hall stage. This year it's Professor David Westall, as a dope-dealing buffoon in Bermuda shorts and sombrero and Dean of Students May Upton, who plays herself and saves Camp So-Sue-Me from villainy. They're both as stiff as boards but incite near pandemonium merely by showing that they too can behave foolishly in public.

The Law School Drama Society projects a pretty clear message to outsiders. "You won't get this and we don't care." As a result, the rest of us usually keep a safe distance from the whole affair and allow the partisans a few nights off from their grueling routine to laugh at themselves and their colleagues. This year should be no exception.