Friday, February 20, 2009

A New Season

Vaudeville audiences could give the loudest sighs I have ever heard. Prisoners in the Bastille couldn't have touched them.
Robertson Davies, World of Wonders.

The first order of business, gentlemen, ladies, fleas and poodles, is to welcome The Show Must Go On in their new season under joint (or perhaps we should say, unhinged) direction. You stumbled here no doubt because you were searching for thonged kitchen assistants, virtual stand-up comedy, unicycle knitting, fruit salads, or trained humans. Well, we have all that and more. We have lunatics, lovers and poets, more devils than vast hell can hold, a fine frenzy rolling, and airy nothings with local habitations and names. All that your imagination might want, transfigur'd by stage lights into fancy's image, gentle beasts and gallants and brave beauties for your entertainment and edification. This dramatic and comedic presentation, born of music hall, burlesque and medicine show, purged of all bawdiness and the lurid, except in its odd bits, offered the first ever trick-riding, buck-dancing and furry-jigged performances in all virtual reality. Your curiosity shall be rewarded with visions of loveliness, acts of daring, characters worthy of the most bizarre imagination, and jokes of so terrible an aspect as to bring a grin to the devil himself.

With trumpet fanfare and trombone anthem, gentle members of the audience, please welcome The Show Must Go On!

2 comments:

Call Me Lucy said...

ooooo Robertson Davies quote. *sob* no more books from him -- just have to keep reading the old ones!

Osprey said...

/me loves Robertson Davies. I named the Geezer Grid after his 'geezerkraft.'