A Tribute to the 2013 Forum

Thoughts on the 2013 Theatre Forum, from the incomparable Ann Thompson...

... across meadows, under trees
see the crowd of devotees
gather, blest by cloudless skies,
to grow culturally wise
absorbing Germany's Kultur
so über, pure and truly ur.

Goethe, Schiller, Berthold Brecht
each teutonically echt.
Wagner  ruled and so did Weill
even Schoenberg for a while
came across melodious
though to me oft odious.

Their impact curbed by sentiment
from the foreign element
of Berlioz, Boito and Gounod
variously limning what we know
will happen to little Marguerite
i.e. Gretchen, sugary sweet.
At least from dear old Donizetti
came some musical confetti
to lighten up historic gloom
cast by Scottish Mary's doom.

But then the icing on the cake!
A finale to make males quake
in their chauvinistic boots
to their atavistic roots.
't Was the cabaret routine
of Berlin Diary's songster queen *
here Sonia Bruzauskas; towering in tails
and ankle boots with chain details,
lacking only Jenny's whip
to cowe the Seeräuber in their ship **.

The menace passed the sex subsided,
now we hear what Kate's decided:
for next year we're on home ground,
Amerika! normal, safe and sound. 
where men and women get along
and a song is just a song ...


* Sally Bowles in Christopher Isherwood's novel,
source for play and film I am a Camera and musical Cabaret.

** from Weill's  Threepenny Opera