‘101 Damnations’ Review: Lost Paradise with the Hasty Pudding

As the overture closes and the Farkas Hall lights dim on a half-full theater, a glowing yellow demon surrounded by sponsors’ names welcomes an audience of both middle-aged and undergraduate patrons to Hell.

Claire Ickle-Error (Gabrielle M. Greene ’27) has just died in a car crash. Claire, a hyper-religious goody-two-shoes, has been preparing for heaven her whole life — but in a surprising twist, she’s mistakenly sorted into Hell. Over the next two hours, the audience is introduced to Hell through kooky characters, including the devil villain, Lucy Fur (Bernardo Sequeira ’26). Through her misadventures, Claire learns that Heaven is just the friends she made along the way and rejects an offer to join the angels.

Most audience members don’t expect a serious, plot-heavy political expose from the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, but this year’s “101 Damnations,” written by Rodmehr Basidj ’26 and Jackson G. Coombs ’26, veered from quirky humor into self-indulgence. The primary issue with the show is the carelessness in handling characters. Each role seems louder than the last, but lacks the necessary “straight man/funny man” balance that makes such performances work. Rather, the show relies too heavily on cheap stereotypes and quick humor.

Take crossdressed Roxanne Rolls (Danny O. Denenberg ’26), for example. This “glam-rockstar” wears a voluminous purple wig, reminiscent of Stevie Nicks’ ’80s style, and a punk-goth outfit. She also speaks with a wavering Midwestern accent. Who is this cultural allusion meant to represent? The only rock star this character evokes is Lisa Kudrow’s evil foster mom in “Hotel for Dogs.”

Denenberg does what he can, but the character contributes little to the plot, offering a messy relationship and a “School of Rock”-esque song in Act 2, but not much else. This confusion extends to Noah Vale (Izzy V. S. Wilson ’26) who, despite his biblical name, is dressed as Julius Caesar and in love with Helen of Troy. He sings a poorly explained song about digging, leaving the audience puzzled.

Other characters showed promise, but were misused. When Jürgen Aluvmeoneday (Emma Rogers ’25) delivers a politically incorrect joke through a fish puppet for the first time, it is funny. However, after being incessantly repeated for over two hours, the bit loses its charm quickly. The fish keeps making increasingly politically incorrect jokes to win over the audience, most of which lack the laughs to justify their shock value. Rogers has beautiful comedic timing and does her best with the part, but it would be nice to see her shine unencumbered by the rubber fish prop.

Rowan D’boat (R. Will Jevon ’27) brings “Total Drama Island”-esque physicality to the stage. He demands attention and laughs, even though his character is essentially redundant and often randomly absent from ensemble moments. His funniest moment is when he soliloquizes like Shakespeare with a “fraccent,” — a highlight of the entire production.

Central to a Pudding show is a drag villain, and Lucy Fur fills the role this year. The character’s position as a devil who manipulates a small girl to do her bidding and sees no redemption arc for her wrong-doings undoubtedly draws an uncomfortable implication on drag in Trump’s 2025. That being said, Sequeira’s exquisite humor distracts from that implication. His delivery is particularly engaging when he breaks the fourth wall and interacts with the audience. His desk-ography is also hilarious. Sequeira’s singing chops would be better showcased with improved compositional choices — for example, the villain’s introduction song would have more punch in a higher pitch.

The technical difficulties throughout the performance on Feb. 20 unfortunately overshadowed Sequeira’s big pre-intermission “Defying Gravity”-belt-moment, his microphone crackling out as he hit his high note. The microphones were problematic throughout all of the Thursday night performance — missing cues, blaring monitor noises, and picking up actor breathing. A joke about the “Tech Crew not doing any work” fell ironically flat, given the sound issues throughout the show.

This show on Feb. 20 also featured bizarre interjections, like when a man in purple short shorts walked onstage, declared through a voice crack that he was Willy Wonka, and left — leaving the audience befuddled. The cast broke character, laughing for a couple minutes before continuing without explanation.

At times, the writing feels more like a running bit for the Pudding members than an effort to entertain the audience. Jokes about Yale being a bad school, working at Goldman or McKinsey, and bits with the Tech Crew and Pit are all examples of low-hanging fruit on which “101 Damnations” relies too heavily.

Unaddressed changed cultural norms also showcase the Pudding’s lack of evolution— while gender bending was once shocking, it now feels as though the Pudding is overplaying a joke that ran cold a few years ago. The Pudding’s incorporation of drag has been examined before, but this year’s show raises the question: Is this character’s flipped gender expression adding anything real here? In the case of Al Dente (Mattea M. Conforti ’28), Dan Swiddadevil (Caitlin A. Beirne ’24), and Anne Gelic (William Murray ’26), the gender-bending indeed contributes to the characters as each performer lends special character-specific talents to their roles. For example, Beirne is a fantastic dancer whose body language contributes heavily to her stage presence and Murray’s precision of hand physicality and exact emulation of the delicate way middle-aged women from the ’70s stand is genuinely impressive.

However, Al Dente and Dan Swiddadevil embody negative Italian and Argentinian stereotypes without subverting or challenging them. An innuendo-filled song about Al Dente and Anne Gelic stuffing cannolis together falls flat, as the actors don’t seem convinced of the hilarity of the conceit. Riskier jokes — like Anne implying a rape by telling Al Dente not to stop even if she screams — take on sour finishes, prompting more tentative than involuntary laughs.

Jokes awkwardly shift between pleasing the undergraduates familiar with internet meme culture and entertaining the older audience members who come — and actually pay in full — annually. Most of the time, “101 Damnations” lands a stumbling punchline on one group, but rarely both. Unlike those of last year’s Pudding show, the music, plot, and characters of the 176th production feel fleeting.

This year’s production represents an identity crisis within the Pudding institution — what was once a quirky, countercultural club known for envelope-pushing humor now feels defined by celebrity endorsements and privileged perks for high-paying first-night attendees. For a standard starting ticket price of $35, “101 Damnations” falls short of the perfectly curated camp for which the Hasty Pudding is known, settling for just-all-right goofiness.

“101 Damnations” runs at Farkas Hall through March 9.

—Staff writer Kate E. Ravenscroft can be reached at kate.ravenscroft@thecrimson.com.