Mask & Wig

The University of Pennsylvania's Mask & Wig Club is a unique organization. Election to the organization is one of the University's prime social plums. In addition, Mask & Wig presents an annual show, semiprofessional in nature, written and staged by graduates, acted by undergraduates, an approximation of Wisconsin's Haresfoot Club. Mask & Wig is a wealthy organization, having given a unit of dormitories to its University, and not every performer in the show gets elected to the club. Last week in Manhattan the organization concluded a five-week tour, presenting its 43rd production, East Lynne Gone West, or Virtue Triumphant, Even Unto Death. Squeezing the last few drops of humor from the well-worn procedure of burlesquing the melodramas of the '60s, East Lynne Gone West was for the most part a very solemn affair. The young Mask & Wiggers seemed incapable of brushing aside the influence of their stodgy elders, projecting an atmosphere of good-natured undergraduate fun across the footlights. Saving grace of the performance was Thomas Gihon Jordan '31, the heroine's melancholy, faithful dog. The music was unbelievably pedestrian, inferior to that of this year's Harvard Hasty Pudding Show, Bulls & Belles. It could not compare with the Princeton Triangle Show's "Something In the Air" or "On a Sunday Evening" (TIME, Dec. 29), which Bandmaster Guy Lombardo broadcasts. In the matter of dancing, however, Mask & Wig puts most of its contemporaries to shame. The complicated, admirably executed routines of East Lynne Gone West were equal to those of any current Broadway production.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.