Hel­lo darlings,

I’m back from shoe-shop­ping in Milano and I have to tell you some­thing : I was back in time to write last month’s col­umn but I was so exhaust­ed, and so depressed to have spent so much mon­ey in Italy that I decid­ed to give myself a rest. Any­way, I’m back with gor­geous shoes but it’s the end of the the­atre sea­son here and there’s not so many open­ings where I can show them off.

The last musi­cal I saw was Le sel et le miel, an orig­i­nal musi­cal on the cre­ation of Israel. I think I was the only Asian per­son in the audi­ence the night I attend­ed the show. It made me feel so spe­cial. But I am spe­cial any­way. Hon­est­ly, I didn’t expect to enjoy it but it was fun. The open­ing scene fea­tures a bare-chest­ed hunk dressed as a pharaoh. That chest was quite impres­sive and had the per­fect amount of hair on it. Not too much, not too few. And that Egypt­ian cos­tume was prob­a­bly the best of all. Can you believe that lat­er in the show, the ladies of the cast have to wear some sec­ond-rate Lau­ra Ash­ley dress­es while build­ing the coun­try ? Per­son­nal­ly, I’d rather wear rags from Les Miz or even feline hair from Cats than wear flow­ery pat­terns. Espe­cial­ly if I was cre­at­ing a new country.

Speak­ing of hunky chests and what-to-wear, my gay-friends-who-love-musi­cals (isn’t that some­what redun­dant ?) were mak­ing plans for the next Gay Pride on June 28th, in Paris. They were so excit­ed and vocal about it. They said that they want­ed to demon­strate to fight against homo­pho­bia and bla bla bla. Yes. Sure. I just think they want to show the world their newest out­fits and cruise a big­ger amount of peo­ple. One of them sug­gest­ed that there should be a Musi­cal The­atre Float and that we (mean­ing Regard en Coulisse) should spon­sor one. I said « Spon­sor ? Hel­lo ? Get real, dar­ling. » Any­way, I couldn’t stop him. He said that we could play songs from the lat­est French musi­cals and that the float would be a big hit. His sug­ges­tions were the fol­low­ing (I hope the lyri­cists will for­give me for the rough translation) :

From Gone with the wind :
« Tous les hommes » : « Bend the back. All the men. We are just men. Break our chains. Leave the hate. Yes but. All the men. We are just men. Sim­ply live. As free men. Oh oh. » (as I said, it’s a rough trans­la­tion and it doesn’t give jus­tice to the real lyrics, but that gives you an idea of how this song could replace « I will sur­vive » and « It’s rain­ing men » as a gay anthem).

From Les demoi­selles de Rochefort :
« Ma seule chan­son d’amour » : « A piece of rain­bow has land­ed on my heart… » (Some gay peo­ple are roman­tic, I know one of them.)

Noth­ing from Lit­tle Prince , how can you use songs about baob­a­bs and ros­es anyway ?

From Tintin :
« Milou et moi » [NDLR : Milou is Tintin’s dog] : « Milou and I, we say « we », when I speak or when he barks… What can part us ? When I cry, he cheers me up, when I smile, he laughs… » (Gay peo­ple have intense rela­tion­ships with their pets. Also, they like to give dog’s names to their actu­al boyfriends, call­ing them « bitch » or « shag­gy dog », and in fact, some­times, the boyfriend barks back. It’s fascinating.)

From Cindy :
« Dis­co queen d’un soir » : « Dis­co queen, one day, dis­co queen, always. » (Sounds like a for­tune cook­ie proverb. Well, maybe it is.)
« La légende de Rose Lat­ulipe » : « All the lit­tle girls like you must obey their fathers on Mar­di Gras nights… »
« Man­ches­ter » : « And if I was offered a beer, I would climb on the bar and show my ass. »
« Env­ole-moi vers les étoiles » : « Oh ! Oh ! Beware ! There is some action tonight at the Galaxy ! »
Well, that’s a lot from Cindy. Maybe they would need a float of their own.

My friend almost con­vinced me. But, here in Regard en Coulisse, we have no bud­get for that, but if an orga­ni­za­tion wants to put up a float, I can always lend a hand to select the go-go dancers. But I wouldn’t dress them in Lau­ra Ashley.