The Undergraduate Chair
The change that comes over Hanover from the last days in January to the first days in February shows itself best in the aspect of the Alumni Gymnasium. One week the big gymnasium floor is the scene of final examinations with 750 seated students dashing off a like number of examination papers. Excitement marks the army of examinees as they straggle into the building and excitement trailing off to relief is in the air after the two short hours. One night a week later the gymnasium is turned over to Carnival. The ball officially starts about ten o'clock after the show given over in Webster Hall and at that hour the costumed students and their girls are thinking about going over to the gym now made over into a southern plantation befo' the wah. The ball lasts until three and the chief interest for most of the dancers is the other costumes, which in many cases are real creations. Few however have anything to do with southern plantations, as the firms in the costuming business are unable to make up everyone as a colonel and his lady or an Uncle Tom and his mammy.
The Carnival ball, like all other spectacles of Carnival after the initial glance, is something of a comedown and rarely interests very deeply the usual college student. What is remembered from past Carnivals is the activity the individual engaged in merely because it was pleasurable and not because it was on any Carnival program, the play or amusement the individual found for himself rather than had served up on a silver platter or the pleasure hit upon without any careful aforethought.
"Double Trouble," the Carnival show, was the most successful production of its kind. Dartmouth has had difficulty in years past finding playwrights of ability and composers whose tunes can be remembered. For the two years past Dartmouth audiences have enjoyed the shows of Charlie Gaynor, a senior from Brookline, Mass. Gaynor wrote both the book and music of the play presented this year and almost nothing but praise has been heard of the show. Jack Yellin, of Brooklyn, N. Y., has become a new favorite on the Hanover stage as a result of this show and Milton Lieberthal, a freshman from Bridgeport, Conn., will be watched in future productions.
The reviewer of the play, signed in TheDartmouth simply as H. P. H., said, "It isn't easy to tell whether 'Double Trouble' owes its success more to Mr. Gaynor's book or music, or to an extremely fortunate choice of actors, or to splendidly arranged settings and light, or—well it does not really matter. This year's Carnival Show is easily the best produced here in years."
OUTING CLUB HOUSE As it appeared the opening night of Carnival in its beautiful setting at the north end of Occom Pond The house is the gift of the class of 1900.
