Pudding Picks Play

Producers of the Hasty Pudding. The atricals announced yesterday that they had chosen the script for the 150th Hasty Pudding production.

While the play "Paradise Lost and Found" will feature such traditional Pudding trademarks as drag queens and Yale put-downs, it also promises to include something different: a cross-dressing woman.

"Everyone knows the Pudding for the guys dressed up like girls, but this year we'll also have a girl dressed up like a guy," said Hayle Chun '98, who is co-producing the show with Adam D. Borchert '98.

The woman is Lady Pudding-on-Airs, a female who assumes a male identity in order to join a Shakespearean acting company, Borchert said.

According to Chun, other characters include King Midas Will-Forget, who has amnesia, and Ethan In-His-Own-World, a Generation-X prince who doesn't want to get married.

Chun described the play as "a very Pudding script" that includes jokes about Wellesley, Yale and tenured professors. It also includes a "pun run," which is a scene using a series of connected puns.

"It has a wonderful plot line," Borchert said. "It was really funny. We would have to take laugh breaks while we were reading it."

The play, written by Pudding members Alain C. DeLeonardis '97, Matthew B. Bakal '97 and Matthew A. Mougalian '96, was chosen by the executive board from among seven plays submitted this summer, Chun said.

The executive board consists of Chun; Borchert; Danton S. Char '98, president of the Theatricals; Mark E. Risher '98, vice president of the technical crew; Daniel M. Ring '99, vice-president of the band; and Paul D. Siemens '98, vice-president of cast.

Chun said "Paradise Lost and Found" had been submitted once before but was reworked and resubmitted this year.

The play will premiere in mid-February, and its opening night will coincide with the presentation of the Pudding's annual Man of the Year award.

Hasty Pudding Theatricals also selects an annual Woman of the Year. Last year, the honors went to actors Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts.

After its campus run, Chun said the group will tour New York and Bermuda during spring break in mid-March.