Barroom baritone: slightly off key. Choice of material: boyhood favorites. Yet Old Showman Joe Papp, producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, won raves from the audience attending his professional singing debut last week at a Manhattan cabaret called the Ballroom. "I'm making a public display of myself at this stage of my life," Papp, 57, began. Then he whipped out a top hat and cane and even mouthed a harmonica. After the finale and a flurry of roses at his feet, the star collapsed in his dressing room and sighed: "I could act Hamlet easier than this any day of the week. This is the pits." Nevertheless, if his one-man show continues to pack them in, Papp could learn to like it. Next pit stop? Jokes Joe: "The Met."

It was the first day of school for the balding, 38-year-old engineer, and campus police had to escort him to classes at the University of California Medical School at Davis. "I'm very happy to be here," said Allan Bakke, enrolled after the U.S. Supreme Court's historic ruling last June invalidating the school's preferential admissions program. Others were not nearly so delighted by his presence. As Bakke arrived, demonstrators shouted, "Affirmative action we demand; unite to smash the Bakke plan!" but the student kept his cool. After a three-hour lecture in molecular and cellular biology, a fellow student handed down his own Bakke decision: "He seems like a pretty nice guy. He's just stuck in class like the rest of us."

Topic A in the Sadat household? Of course. But Topic B? Wedding bells. A day after Papa returned to Cairo last week, his only son, Gamal, 21, an engineering student, married Dina Erfan, 20. The reception was held in a massive canvas tent in the gardens of Anwar and Jihan Sadat's residence in Giza, and the 1,500 guests dined simply on cold meats, lemonade and tea. The entertainment was something else. On the program was a blond singer, a comedian and Egypt's two leading belly dancers. For Sadat, it was a perfect way to unwind after the bumps and grind at Camp David.

White ties, tails--even a few evening gowns. The members of Washington's National Symphony Orchestra do things in style, and marching on the picket line is no exception. The high note of the N.S.O.'s strike, which began four days before the opening night of the season, came when the orchestra's conductor, Mstislav Rostropovich, joined the marchers in an unusual show of support. When police came by and asked the strikers to move away from the entrance to the Kennedy Center, Slava, exiled from the U.S.S.R., kept a civil tongue in his cheek. "In my country," he protested to the cops, "I have never been in jail."

On the Record

Margaret Thatcher, England's Tory leader, on the end of a rough day: "I shed a few tears, silently, alone."

Sally Rand, septuagenarian fan dancer, when asked after a recent performance whether she really wears nothing beneath her ostrich plumes: "It doesn't much matter. The Rand is quicker than the eye."

Alfred Hitchcock, film director: "Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food."

Joan Kennedy, Ted's wife, on living alone in a Boston apartment while her family resides in Washington: "Let's say I'm 'on sabbatical' up here."

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