Musical drama in 21 songs.
1. DUET: ALAMBA SONG
Sound of marching soldiers
Mausie:
(recites aloud) Arnold, Fritz, Wilhelm, Karl, Hugo, Paul, Gustave, Frank, Peter, Friederich, Stefan, Johnny, Martin. (Marching fades out)
Lisa:
All gone
Mausie:
Motor rhythms right, machine gun left
Lisa:
Pounding out the dance your Stravinski couldn’t forget
Mausie:
Forget! The war to end all wars! We’ve seen so many
Lisa:
Berliner Damen!!
Mausie:
Neunsehn Hundert Zwanzig Jahre - 1920
Lisa:
Maybe
Mausie:
Me? Mausie. Und She? Lisalotte – a whore!
Lisa:
A nice whore.
Mausie:
Who wouldn’t! We’ve had fucked a horse for a crust of bread.
Lisa:
Mausie! Language! Nicely. What keeps mankind alive?
Mausie:
Mankind! Remember the streets, the mean, hungry people edging along death row, the cannons thunder dead in the distance
Lisa:
We sold our bodies to larded men – quite capital men – staking them claims over bodies and lead
Mausie:
What keeps mankind alive? Supply and demand – capital’s dreams, unfettered machines. Wages that slide, profits that ride – men who skate on rotting stools
2. DUET: WHAT KEEPS MANKIND ALIVE
Mausie:
Strangers?
Lisa:
No! Friends. (Aside) It wasn’t always so.
Mausie:
Nein!
Lisa:
Nein!! Mackie!!!
Mausie:
Mackie! My god, you trumped up little bitch. That rouge, those tacky nails, each hair a purple death, lips like puckered molasses – a lean shell, sallow tits, hungry bits. Slut, bitch, fucking whore!
Lisa:
(with a smile) True.
Mausie:
All true. I hated your guts.
Lisa:
A man, of course. Darlings, in the old days we fought over men!
Mausie:
(softly) True, all true
3. DUET: MACKIE UN ICH (JEALOUSY DUET)
Mausie:
The bastard left us both
Lisa:
We got drunk
Mausie:
Pissed until the hurt shot away
Lisa:
A hazy world, daft, just plain fantasy. (with a deep voice) ‘Nostalgia in memoriam’
Mausie:
A dangerous song
Lisa:
Reflection/Warning!
4. DUET: BILBAO SONG
Lisa:
Forget the cannon’s thunder? We lived to forget, drank to forget, loved to forget
Mausie:
But always
Lisa:
Repeat after me: Warning, reflection, war is on its way
Mausie:
Capital’s friend, sharing the load. Bottoms up my proletarian bastards! A new war!
Lisa:
A battle to shake loose all our morals.
5. DUET: CANON SONG
Lisa:
Sharing, caring left you in the lurch. The only god – money. The only dream – death. New right, new left? Seen it all before – each miserable step. Warning, reflection, war is on its way, sweetly conniving to lull you in your grave
6. DUET: AS YOU MAKE YOUR BED (DENN WIE MAN SICH BETTET)
Mausie:
Every day, goodness seeps beyond our control etching its lines of sudden retreat, dark lines on thick brows.
Lisa:
But who are we to praise the thoughtful?
Mausie:
We travelled the sea! We saw the world, hitching along on a two-buck tale. And the men! Sailors!! Gold diggers rasping out their own sweet lullabye.
7. DUET: SAILORS TANGO (DAS MEER IS BLAU SO BLAU)
Lisa:
We travelled on love, on hopeless schemes, Lisalotte East, Mausie West, the drums already pounding … marched to the pitch of warring tribes, crowding the night with out endless jibes. Men on the run – women in tow
Mausie:
Who gives a piss for the foolish bastards! Walk through all that shit? Love to be hit? Who needs their pain, their shallow rage – their simple truths. Stand by and lick their every wound, masking each inadequacy with another tender kiss? Who? You!!
Lisa:
Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Mausie Gruber will now present for your delectation her heartfelt lullabye – from the West
8. Solo Mausie: BARBARA SONG
Mausie:
And now, from the East, another instructive tale!
9. SOLO Lisa: SURABAYA JOHNNY
Mausie:
Friends?
Lisa:
Friends!!
10. DUET: SONG OF MANDALY
END PART 1
PART II
Sound of marching soldiers
Lisa:
I remember that boy – cold, frightened, at one with his old grand tribe, blood brothers steeped in their own fear –hurting to fight yet too frightened to admit a single fear – wanton boys in a world oozing crime
I held him in my arms, his blonde hair cropped hard against my flesh, the blood of a thousand men merely a trickle on his downy skin.
Mausie:
We had seen it all before. What defence against the almighty inevitable?,
Lisa:
(with a Nazi salute) Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.
Mausie:
Deutschland, Deutschland all will shatter.
Lisa:
The drum beats on
Mausie:
The song weeps on. Today they march, tomorrow they kill: Spain, Africa, the East, the best, each little glory hole puckers the earth
Lisa:
Rhineland blues! My man too.
Mausie:
Up and away the master calls. Little sport for little men. We must conquer, we must win! A nations ego wrapped in sin.
Lisa:
Ha! Mausie and I took to the sea
Mausie:
Coaxing, conniving, tripping in time
Lisa:
Himmlische erde, himmlische weib. Where better to go when the world is crumbling than that ice cream parlour in the sky, where appetites seem that much bigger – where Jewish boys can dance and snigger. Amerika!!
Mausie:
America?
11. DUET: HOW CAN YOU TELL AN AMERICAN
Mausie:
Americans – no sense of proportion! They always make up their minds. Boots in first. Dear Hollywood! History is always somewhere else: in Berlin street, on Belgian plain, in hard edge tales that cause no pain. Hollywood paints it all. Gaudy, dizzily reduced to a primary tale. Nice and tidy ‘ happy endings!
All that overweening optimism made me sick, like candyfloss on a rotting apple.
Lisa:
I like it. So wunderbar
Mausie:
Fanny, here, fell in love
Lisa:
Wunderbar!! Wunderbar
Mausie:
Rotten, sickly sentimental love.
Lisa:
No so!
Mausie:
You did. You went soft, darling!
Lisa:
No so! I saw through his fears. Men are men, whatever the accent – and I liked this accent. It was nice playing a kind of make believe, pretending a kind of dependence, teasing their egos. Ja, just so easy Joe – good to float a while, soft like a peach downy and dumb. So schon, it was just so …..
Mausie:
Piss weak!
Lisa:
Seductive!
Mausie:
Asinine.
12. SOLO Lisa: THAT’S HIM
Mausie:
Bubble baths and ….. booze
Lisa:
Why not!
Mausie:
Huddle all you discontented – from Alabama to Alaska
Lisa:
We had found a home, here, in this oversize melting pot. Amerika simply kept us warm..
Mausie:
True – hunger at bay
Lisa:
Together again
Mausie:
Maybe
Lisa:
Mausie and me, sugar time babes caravanning across the prairies
Mausie:
God’s own country. Shysters
Lisa:
Hucksters.
Mausie:
Tricksters, ambling along with their apple pie cheers. Worn empty faces – a thousand dogged little towns
Lisa:
But such dreams – sehr mutig – so brave to believe. Always – beyond that fucking rainbow!
13. DUET: THAT’S PROGRESS
Mausie:
You can tell an American from the way he sits in his own fucking shit – unbearable poverty kicked aside by a dancing shoe. Patriotic songs, pin-up girls, the steamy tenements crowded with effortless dreams
14. SOLO LISA: MY SHIP
Mausie:
I, too, wept, but what dreams? I had grown up on bitter tales, on a better reality than one tiny whiff of success, than a touch of being right – right for someone else? Happiness? I was ill equipped for this softer self. Mausie, vulnerable Mausie. My defences crumbled.
Lisa:
Love, of course
15. SOLO MAUSIE: SPEAK LOW
Lisa:
Everything was so sad, so hopelessly sad. Men off on another war
Maisie
The old world – devouring itself. Death and more death – like a tom tom pounding
Lisa:
How do you laugh in the face of such evil
16. DUET: SCHICKELGRUBER
Lisa:
We had lived too long under the sign of uncertainty.
Mausie:
Another empty room another aching farewell. Camp followers – always left behind – in love, in war – the eternally dispossessed, immigrants in a cold, cold land.
17. SOLO MAUSIE: LONELY HOUSE
Lisa:
We were growing old, secretly, and yearning for one last spring – we could no longer run away.
18. SOLO LISA: SEPTEMBER SONG
Mausie:
There is no tomorrow – only fear and survival.
The men march on still haunted by their simple songs. Each decade hears that brutal step. New Right, new Left – all promise peace in paradise – all promise … happy endings … in endless consumption.
Stupid, stupid endings. No ‘goodtime Joe’, no better world, no calm that comes with knowing.
Lisa:
You live with that
Mausie:
You hope against the cold tomorrow. You wince at the same mistakes, the same gnawing pain
Lisa:
You choose. You find the way. You make believe
Mausie:
Today … we are alone.
19. DUET: LOST IN THE STARS
Lisa:
Lost in the stars. In the here and now. A summer of endless sufficiency or a cold unnatural truce? Who know? Who cares? We still hope. We pull down the blinds and wait for a better world and sing our wounded song
20. DUET: LOVE SONG
Mausie:
Fairytale endings? (laughing) Biblical nonsense.
Lisa:
We had reached the point all journeys make – the end begins
Mausie:
Each revolution restores it own hard rules
Lisa:
Mausie and I would go to sleep
Mausie:
Married – bearing children
Lisa:
The past a bitter perfume. Comfort, deadening comfort our own retreat
Mausie:
(with humour) Nice and tidy (darker) and yet
Lisa:
Sometimes in the middle of another dark dream
Mausie:
A voice echoes: warning, reflection war is on its way, confounding forever your simple little gains
Lisa:
(with momentary fear) Johnny, macht die musik from the good old days
Music begins, finding the beat Lisa begins to smile
21. DUET: MACK THE KNIFE
ENDE
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Gar Jones - 1987 revised 2016. COPYRIGHT