The Pudding The Boy Who Cried Beowulf at the Hasty Pudding this month

IT'S BEEN a bad year for all the old values at Harvard, and the Hasty Pudding's HPT 122, The Boy Who Cried Beowulf, won't offer old alums much solace. Slipped into a somnolent winter between Fall and Spring campaigns. Beowulf has the bumps and grinds and the spangles and the "boobalas" of all its 121 predecessors, but there are, on balance more bumps than anything else.

The gullies get deepest in those long stretches between musical routines when the production falls back on Fred Grandy's script. Loosely modeled on a "Danish" myth of monsters and monster-slayers, Grandy's book offers no more and no less than the formulaic plot on which Padding productions usually hang their gags, lyrics, and kick-line. Crisis strikes the oversexed and overhung court of King Holroes the Horney of Denmark (Jack Olive) when the man-eating Grendel family, monsters from the nearby Black Lake, emerge to lay claim to Hotroes' frontheavy daughter, Princess Boobhilde (Line Caplan). With the kingdom paralyzed and helpless. Bennet the Serf (Dick Boling), a slave and would-be poet, goes out in search of the legendary Beowulf (Christopher Tunnard), whose prowess alone can save Boobhilde from the monsters. Beowulf turns out to be well past his prime, but he and Bennet manage to convince both the Grendels and the Court of his ferocity. The truth comes out in the end, of course, but after the usual reversals, schemes and near-weddings, the good people end up with the good people and the bad are banished.

All this proceeds pretty much as expected, but begins to drag when the gags rarely rise above overplayed puns (Wife: "I haven't finished putting on my face." Husband: "Did your chisel break?") Predictable references to topical material (Dane refusing to fight the Grendels: "My lottery number is 360") are no relief. Fortunately director Fred Carmichael has done an admirable job in milking every bit of humor out of a sparse text and occasionally sparse talent. Christopher Tunnard is a particular disappointment, short of comic timing and vocal talent. Jack Olive, on the other hand, has the vigorous, obscene Hotrocs well under control, and Dick Boling dominates the show with an effortless and confident portrayal of the sly, slightly grandioase peasant-poet.

The shorteomings of Pudding books rarely destroy Pudding shows, and this is one tradition which this year's extravaganza has mercifully continued. Page Grubb and Don Wilkins have conspired in concocting music and lyrics which are always competent and occasionally inspired. Grubb's elegantly arranged "Keep Your Hands Off My Hero." and Wilkins' trenchant "This is the Big Time" almost rescue the show. Cheryl McFadden's choreography is shaky in the opening scenes, but produces a particularly dazzling kick-line of glittering green "Grizzlies" toward the end of the first act. Beoeulf's costumes and sets produce the usual spectacular effects, but even with the rest of the show's occasional lifts, can't really pull HPT 122 out of the dumps.