As finals loom closer, instead of opening up my Corporations casebook, I decided to go see Harvard's "Freshman Musical," which is a musical written and performed entirely by (undergrad) freshmen. Because seeing this stuff interests me. It was reasonably well-done -- this was the Saturday matinee, so the audience was small (about 75 people in a space that could hold perhaps 500) although I assume it was larger for the Thursday and Friday night shows and will be larger for the fourth and final show tonight. Apparently it's admitted students weekend, and that's an audience they hope to grab -- although there only seemed to be about a dozen admitted students there. It was interesting -- the female admitted students (all of the admitted students seemed to have the same bright red folder, so that's how I could tell) came in as a big group of 6 or 7, all sat together, introduced themselves to the people around them, were very friendly, and looked like they were enjoying themselves immensely. The 4 or 5 male admitted students came in by themselves, sat in seats separated from anyone else, and looked generally uncomfortable and out of place. I don't know why I noticed this -- surely if I was an admitted student I would have looked like the guys did, and would have been too shy to proactively try and make friends with people I didn't know -- but I thought the gender split interesting. The show itself was enjoyable. The music was considerably stronger than the lyrics, the script was fine and occasionally funny, the acting was solid; I was struck by how few singers were in the show -- that is, people who were trusted to sing. There were no less than a dozen and a half actors and actresses, but only 5 sang at all, and really only one guy sang a lot -- he sang perhaps 9 of the 13 songs, or something like that, although a bunch of the songs were more like song-lets. He had a fine voice. The two girls they let sing both had excellent voices. Two other guys sang a little bit. No one else sang at all except as chorus bulk in a couple of numbers. But for a show without any apparent professional influence, it was solid. I enjoyed it, which should really be the measure I guess. And I'm certainly glad I went. So anyone on the Harvard campus reading this who has nothing to do tonight -- I'll give it a plug and recommend it.