Center Group Dives Into Sea Theme : The Masked Ball Carnival benefit for the Performing Arts Center features a curious stage show and few people actually wearing masks.

The Masked Ball chapter of the Performing Arts Center had its seventh annual Carnival benefit Saturday. The $75-per-person party, called Carnival Under the Sea this year, brought 252 guests to the Disneyland Hotel and raised an estimated $30,000. It featured a cash-bar cocktail hour, a chicken dinner and a curious stage show that paired gleeful amateurism with wild hyperbole.

Sights and Sounds

Was it a booking error that plunked this carnival smack in the middle of Lent? Party planners nonetheless hewed to Mardi Gras form, with a designated queen, Eloise Neely, and king, Ron O’Reilly--whose identity was secret until the end of the program.

Phyllis Cottingham, chairwoman of the event, greeted guests from a podium in the ballroom. “Anyone prone to being seasick,” she warned, “should have taken their Dramamine by now.”

Anyone prone to sarcasm should have taken a hike. “We’re going for a ride on the S.S. Masked Ball!” chirped emcee Tim Taylor. “Prepare to dive! Dive! Dive! Dive! “

And so Taylor burbled along through the 40-minute show, riding the “our submarine” metaphor out to the horizons of the script (“Hey, somebody get that fisherman off our sub!”). He introduced queens and kings of years past, then the 1991 court (four pair of chapter members, each dolled up in a sea-theme costume) and finally this year’s royal couple: “The Queen Pearl, Jewel of the Sea, a Shimmering Beauty!” With those words Neely took her bows and pranced around the dance floor, swaying solo in the spotlight.

“The Duke of Soul, the Big Kahuna, King Neptune!” Out came O’Reilly, tossing chocolates and gum-ball machine jewelry at the crowd as he marched around the room in flowing Roman robes.

With each introduction, the crowd cheered, the emcee beamed, the band struck up another tune.

Faces

Committee members included Susan Levine, Joyce Helfrich, Georgia James, Yolanda Jensen, Wendy Harder, John Stephens and Mike Trujillo. Peter Carter is president of the chapter.

Among the very few guests to wear masks to this masked ball were Tom Johnson, in a homemade creation of black fox fur and crow feathers, and Don Pasco, in an extravagant peacock-feather headpiece. Ironically, Pasco spent the cocktail hour maskless, after one committee member shooed him away from a display of masks for sale and another gruffly discouraged him from speaking with a reporter. Pasco, looking bemused, left his feathery mask in the ballroom in deference to the fears of his hosts.