Criticism on the Pudding Play.

The Boston Transcript has the following editorial comment on the Hasty Pudding Play, under the title of "Most Excellent Fooling."

The Hasty Pudding has plainly been shaking itself for its theatricals this season. Of late years it has confined itself to producing the burlesquiest of burlesques, with now and then a touch or two of the Hoyt Drama; in "Proserpina" it now at last gives us something which can very fairly be called an operetta, an operette in the Offenbach vein. And it hardly need be said that, compared with what burlesque has grown to in our day, anything approaching Offenbach operabouffe has a strong smack of the "legitimate." We rather wonder that this sort of thing has not occurred to the Pudding before; for what could be more appropriate? An old and much-honored club of university undergraduates would seem almost predestined to this sort of wild caricature of the classic in its theatrical doings; the whole genre has an academic flavor which should have recommended it to the Pudding long ago. Here is real burlesque, worthy of the name, a caricature of something; not the inane and insane business that has usurped the name of burlesque of late years, and is really a burlesque or caricature of nothing at all. The rumor was spread abroad early in the season that the Pudding meant to do something really "serious" this time. Well, "serious" is a comparative term, and people who feared that this year's theatricals would furnish no food for laughter troubled themselves quite unnecessarily; "Proserpina" is not "serious" enough to hurt; it is about as serious as "Orphee aux Enfers." But this is quite an enormous, and wholly welcome, stride in the serious direction, considering the other things the Pudding has done recently.

The librettist has turned out a book very much on the old Meihac & Halevy lines, taking mythological dramatis personae and the gist of an old myth, and burlesquing the whole by the introduction of all sorts of modern matter. And in this he has shown a very keen eye for caricature. Take, for instance, his fusion of the Greek Pluto with the modern Devil, of Hades with Hell, and then further burlesquing the composite by making Hell a sort of modern hotel, into which no sinless person can obtain admission; this is excellent burlesque. His working-out of this comic donnee is as ingenious and clever in detail as the idea itself. Of course there is some variety business, but not enough to be out of proportion. Some of it is excellent; especially funny is a game of "football of the future," played in evening dress, and with the politeness of a Sir Charles Grandison. And if the text is good, the music is fully worthy of it. The composer for such a troupe has a hard task before him; he is handicapped on every hand. Few of the actors are really singers, and some of the principal ones have a compass of not exceeding five or six notes; then it stands to reason that all the music to be sung must necessarily be in the very simplest and most perspicuous rhythms, or the singers cannot learn it. This is really the most serious handicap of all: to forego all rhythms except those of the march, the galop or the waltz. And still the young composer has written a great deal of really charming music in "Proserpina," showing no little melodic inventiveness and even succeeding in giving some numbers a characteristic coloring by means as simple as they are effective, and made the best of it as only a man of decided talent and considerable musical knowledge could have done.