Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the university’s undergraduate theater ensemble, put on “Heist Heist Baby,” which follows budding journalist, Rita L’Boutette (Isabella Peña) in her attempt to uncover the culprit behind an art heist, at the unveiling of a new masterpiece by celebrity artist Spanksy. The musical, written by Harvard juniors Sophie Garrigus and Maddie Dowd, features an ensemble cast of larger-than-life characters including a curator (Sophie Garrigus), a trophy wife (Matthew Cole) and the ghost of a beheaded European aristocrat (Will Jevon).
The experience of watching “Heist Heist Baby” is best represented by the perplexing dream ballet that closes out the musical: confusing, technically impressive, somewhat clever, and, ultimately, too long. The convoluted plot gives the impression that the show was written around the kinds of characters that each student wanted to play. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – good musicals are seldom plot driven. Each individual performer is incredibly talented and skillful – special attention must be paid to first year Kaylor Toronto’s teen pop star Holden Outhopeforyou-Girl – but the result of such precision in individual performances is a whole that is less than the sum of its parts.
Fundamentally, the question that “Heist Heist Baby” raises is, what is the point and purpose of satire? The Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ website states that: “The Pudding show has a long tradition of daring social and political commentary, never shying away from controversial current topics.” They laud the bravery of past productions that satirized the Russian Revolution in 1919 and Hitler and Mussolini in 1938. As the 2024 Pudding performers focused their jabs at a fictitious washed up television actress (Emma Rogers) and a bumbling paleontologist (Nikita Nair), I found myself wondering where that former spirit had gone.
The musical conveniently avoids addressing any contemporary issues by setting the musical in 1992, leading with era-appropriate, Jay Leno-esk digs at OJ Simpson and Bill Clinton. The closest the ensemble got to the year 2024 was a cheap “lock her up” reference. The ensemble squandered the opportunity to use their considerable platform to say anything about the state of the world. Instead of using the character of the wealthy geriatric fracker (Alexander Lim) to lampoon the ultra wealthy, considerable time is spent joking about his bingo game.
Above all, “Heist Heist Baby” lacks courage. The courage to tell the truth, to fail, to get in trouble, and, most importantly, the courage to be truly funny. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals clearly have the capacity to do all that and more, so the only possible explanation is a lack of nerve. If the cliché “it’s funny because it’s true” is to be believed, the reason that many of the jokes in “Heist Heist Baby” did not land wasn’t because they weren’t funny, it’s because they weren’t true.
