Entertainment or Not

PERHAPS FOR the first time this year, the Harvard cultural crowd will be giving the VD epidemic some serious competition this weekend and those diehards who insist on lingering around the Casablanca, Nini's Corner or--Heaven forbid--the House library should have their social connections severed and study cards mutilated. First on the list of floor stompers is Harvard's 124th annual Hasty Pudding Theatrical. The people at the Pudding are looking for a comeback, and if the magnificence of their effort in any way shows up in the final production, they should have no difficulty resurrecting themselves from the cellar of taste the 123rd show explored. At the Loeb Don Bacon, assistant professor of English, is directing Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV. This, of course, is a perfect chance for Harvard's highly touted C-students to revenge themselves on one of their professors, but if Bacon directs as well as he grades, there will be no need for rotten fruit. Even the Varsity Hockey team might be getting in on the melodrama. After last Saturday night's rumble, this weekend's rematch with Yale in the Boston Arena should be El Topo on ice.

But the only opening that has a hope of making Cambridge a permanently classier town is that of the Harvard Cabaret. Cosponsored by the Dunster House Drama Society and the Currier House Committee, the Cabaret will perform Chris Durang's "The Nature and Purpose of the Universe" for its premiere. Durang graduated last June, having gained notoriety, admittance to Yale Drama School and near-excommunication for his "The Greatest Musical Ever Sung" produced in Dunster House a year ago. In his latest work, he shifts his focus from the Bible to a Weehawken, New Jersey housewife but continues to court Papal revenge with large doses of Durang's 50-minute play this weekend--at 10 and 11:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights.

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the Harvard Cabaret's inaugural lies in its proposal to go beyond this weekend and this month to become a permanent center for live entertainment. Producers Vic Budnick, a first-year student at the Law School who did drama work as an undergraduate at Yale, and Al Franken '73--the man behind Nixon!--are looking for material and talent to carry the Cabaret through its initial Spring season. Next weekend will have a musical retrospective with piano and clarinet on the work of Cole Porter. Between shows there will be music and, if a way is found to transcend Currier House's nouveau-brick decor, atmosphere. The Cabaret hopes to support itself by its cooking--the preliminary menu includes hot and cold drinks, chocolate mousse, baklava, eclairs and pastries. With no admission charge, only the most miserly socialite could begrudge the measly fifty-cent food minimum.

The Cabaret's most attractive feature for city slickers exiled to Cambridge is that it's not just evening entertainment, it's real night life--late night life. You can spend those sleepy early evening hours at the Casablanca, at the Loeb, at the House library and still be in time for 11:30 show at the Harvard Cabaret. If the Cabaret is successful--and if Al Franken knows what's good for him, it better be--it will be an opportunity for undergraduates to try out original material on live audiences.

After the Harvard Cabaret has established itself, responsible citizens might want to check out one field where Cambridge still trails Princeton, New Jersey--dancing. There is no reason that a University that lets its students eat oats interhouse shouldn't have a regular spot for them to dance on weekends. After a week attending or not attending classes students who c-c-can't stand K-K-Katy's should have a place to go. If enough people want such an institution--something even more natural than a macrobiotic diet--it should be possible to establish one. The people are like the ocean. They cannot be stopped.