In Competition No. 3285, you were invited to supply an extract from the libretto of a musical based on the life story of a politician. Berlusconi: A New Musical, which comes to Southwark Playhouse next month, is described enticingly on the theatre’s website as ‘a hilarious, naughty, noisy exposé of the original perma-tanned media mogul and populist politician… like Evita on acid’.
Tim Rice didn’t get much of a look-in in the entry, swept aside by the spirits of Sondheim, W.S. Gilbert, Irving Berlin and Oscar Hammerstein. Opening the show is Basil Ransome-Davies’s riff on Frank Loesser’s ‘If I Were a Bell’ . He and his fellow winners pocket £30. An honourable mention goes to Sue Pickard.
Chamberlain:
Ask me how do I feel, Ask me now we’re together in Munich.
Well sir, all I can say is I’m really admiring your tunic
While von Ribbentrop just pops my cork,
Mussolini has been a great help,
And we’ve had such a wonderful talk
That if I were a bulldog I’d whelp!Hitler:
Ask me how do I feel, little me with my modest entreaties.
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