The cross-dressing Hasty Pudding Theatricals have been making their annual trek to Bermuda for 37 years. It is almost a Spring tradition to turn up at City Hall and watch the young Harvard students make a stab at comedy.

But not every tradition is a good one and some -- like this one -- should simply be laid to rest.

This year's production -- Fangs for the Memories -- features a James Bond meets Austin Powers meets Frankenstein meets Dracula storyline.

Superspy Hank E. Panky is hot on the trail of the evil Butterfinger and his sidekick Tanya Headankoff (everyone on stages turns their heads and coughs every time they say her name -- hilarious). The evil ones want to mummify the world and take off for Transylvania to put their plan in motion.

The Bond character played by Cutler Cook is not terrible despite having to use lines like "I love to work a-broad'' and "screw me if I'm wrong but is your name ...'' His character improves dramatically when he is mummified.

Once in Transylvania the audience is introduced to the remaining characters: Elvira L'Infection, Funkenstein, the evil dictator Marshall Plann, Dee Fector, Dragula, Joaquin Dead, Oksana Plow, Mary McCousin, Mummie Dearest and -- my personal favourite -- Ian Cogneeto.

One of the problems with the 153rd Hasty production is that it is simply perilously outdated.

Are bad jokes about communism still necessary in 2001? Maybe these drew uproarious laughter when performed in 1962 but surely the best and the brightest of America's golden school could find something a little more contemporary to poke fun at for a new Millennium.

The puns are so obvious that they are painful. A scene where poets names are strung into silly stream of nonsense -- "Usually when it comes to Whitman men are at a loss''; "Anne Sexton on the first date is out of the question'' -- makes you wonder if the SAT exams have been dumbed down recently.

There a few mild attempts at contemporary humour: one foot-and-mouth disease joke, one reference to The Sixth Sense, a Survivor-style tribal council scene.

Other than that much of humour, dance and song is recycled from the 150 odd years productions.

A century and half ago maybe it was amusing enough to simply have boys put on dresses, heavy make-up and dance around a bit but the show feels stagnant now.

Even toilet humour, it seems, has passed the troupe by. The show is not as funny as American Pie, Something About Mary or an Adam Sandler flick.

The cast sleepwalks their way through the bad material using terrible East German accents and pancake makeup and the audience is left praying for an eternal state of zombification just to get through the overly long show.

Ian Cogneeto is the funniest character. He starts the show as a head on a box looking like the old Star Trek's Captain Pike.

He is then reconstructed with body parts from an array of folks of both sexes including "a less than generous endowment from the John Wayne Bobbitt collection'' which gives actor Kevin Meyers the opportunity to display some decent physical humour.

And he gets to utter the most apt line in the entire show. In response to one of the many bad jokes, he says: "That's stupid.''