5. Longtails, whales and, for the past 30 years, the Hasty Pudding have heralded the arrival of Bermuda's spring.

The 145th annual drag show by Harvard's famed undergraduate theatre company is entitled Romancing the Throne and is set in mediaeval (or is it Elizabethan?) Merrie England.

Yes, the Princess was called Diana Loneliness and the media, in the form of Tab Lloyd and Tess Pattern were hovering about. This royal soap opera, however, was just that -- right down to the ads which provided the inspiration for most of the yawnful puns in this dragged-out drama.

All thoughts of an evening of biting satire dissolved in a plot that took a complicated route to nowhere.

In a decidedly Grimm fairytale of murder and intrigue, the proceedings started promisingly enough with Princess Diana spoofing the immortal words of those other royals, Hamlet and Macbeth. As the characters danced and sang their tortuous ways about enchanted forests, evil queens, dank dungeons and fire-snorting dragons, the audience settled down to the now familiar mix of American vaudeville and English pantomime, the latter emphasised, of course, by the fact that here was not one `Dame' but a whole cast of them, flaunting heaving bosoms and flashing shapely legs.

On the credit side, the music by Edwin Outwater certainly rose to the occasion, with some witty interpolations of other classic masters, notably Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream. The band, under the musical direction of Jeffery Tennessen delivered his score with copious vigour and enthusiasm.

There were some fine performances, too. Bart St. Clair invested the role of Princess Diana with a virtuosic display that ranged from Shakespearean verse, some throatily belted-out songs and a talent for the Ginger Rogers-era of dancing.

Stanley Carlylle Sneeringer III was a macho Galahad Lasnight who managed a degree of hauteur in spite of his scarlet cod-piece, and Steven Lucado was a suitably zonked-out Beauluc, Duke of Hazarde. In the lesser roles, Mark Baskin brought real humour to his role of the "vertically challenged'' dragon, as did Mark Fish as the splendidly glacial Miranda Warning.

There were some amusing moments: cashing in on the trendiness of 12-step programmes, there were a whole slew of jokes aimed at America's desperate need for self-help.

Best of all, though, was the truly sparkling Kick Line, where rows of blonde pigtailed, high-heeled dairy milkmaids brought the show to a raucous and flashy finale.

As always, the production was sumptuous, presumably with no expenses spared.

It is worth noting that the direction (by Greg Minahan), choreography (excellent, by Karen Pisani Pastore), scenic design, lighting design, and costume design (outstandingly good, by Craig Sonnenberg) is not the work of Harvard undergraduates, but of professionals who are brought in to put this extravaganza together.

For many years, the Hasty Pudding invasion has been part of Bermuda's traditional celebration of College Weeks. Elspeth Gibson (and her late husband, Don) performed a unique service in bringing this famous group to the Island year after year.

The reality, however, is that the Pudding is not as savoury as it once was.

Maybe our perceptions of what is funny have changed: not everyone finds it a scream to see the alleged cream of American intelligentsia prissying around like a bunch of babbling Barbie dolls. This, of course, is a matter of personal taste.

What is really alarming is the lack of imagination and a total absence of originality in a script that reeks of schoolboy humour -- and secondhand at that. Who ever would believe that the hallowed halls of Harvard would be reduced to borrowing the already tired puns of commercial TV-land and using them in a desperate attempt to breathe life into a dead plot? If this is the best we can expect from one of the leading universities in the United States, maybe it's a case of not `God bless' but `God help America'. -- Patricia Calnan STANLEY SNEERINGER: Macho man in red cod-piece.