Where puns fail, running gags take over. The best of the lot is Annette's tendency to interrupt Maximillian and never finish his thoughts. Sample:

Maximillian: "Does that mean we're--"

Annette: "No, that doesn't mean we're."

THE JOKES wear thin at times, and the slickness of the production occasionally detracts from the playful spontaneity that have historically made Pudding shows so fun to watch. With $300,000 to spend on a production, one can lose sight of the fact that it's young men dressed up like mommy up there. Hasty Pudding Theatricals could spend a million more and it still wouldn't be great theater.

It would have been interesting to see Safari Sagoodi with its glitz budget cut in half and the effort devoted to the actual performance doubled. We suspect we would have laughed more.

We would also have liked to see a Pudding show that bucked the recent trend toward vapid sexual humor and returned to the good old days when the productions were satire as well as burlesque.

But the proof of the Pudding is in the laughs, and Safari Sagoodi doesn't fail in that respect. "Don't worry about the substance, 'cause we've got tons of style," the cast sings in "Gilt Complex," the opening number. The rest of the show bears out that prediction.

John L. Larew '91 and Joshua M. Sharfstein '91 were editorial chairs of The Crimson in 1990.