BERLIN, July 12: Loathed during her lifetime by compatriots for having turned her back on Germany and fighting against the Nazi cause with the Americans, singer and actress Marlene Dietrich is finding her place in Berlin at last, six years after her death.Each night since June 28, the Renaissance Theater has sported a full house when a reincarnation of the star, played by German actress Judy Winters, makes her entrance in a show combining elements of acting and music. And sure enough, with each fall of the curtain, ovations roar.``It's moving. Marlene is back,'' proclaimed fan Eckart Schmidt, 60. ``The people of Berlin have rediscovered a remarkable woman who loved her country very much,'' added Katryn, 30. The show's profound success has surprised everyone including the theatre management. Until now, all of the productions involving Marlene have been flops in Berlin, even those featuring stars like Uta Lemper.``Perhaps people have finally begun to understand what Marlene represents,'' commentedSteffi Recknagel, a playwright at the Renaissance Theater. ``Until now she's been widely honoured in France, in the United States . everywhere but in Germany,'' she added.The Lola of Blue Angel (1930), discovered by US producer Josef Sternberg in Berlin at the end of the 1920s and made a legend very quickly in Hollywood, is the most famous German actress of the century. Yet there remain Germans who have not yet forgiven her for seeking US citizenship. After the Nazis came to power and for having sung Lili Marlene for the GIs during World War II. She had to wait some five years after her 1992 death at the age of 90 to be officially reinstated in her homeland, with Berlin naming a square after her and the postal service producing a stamp with her effigy.The love-hate relationship between Dietrich and her native land, where she only returned once in 1960 before being buried in a small Berlin cemetery at her request, is the focus of the production Marlene, adapted from a play byBritish author Pam Gems.Marlene revolves around an imaginary dialogue between the actress and her assistant Vivian, right before a recital. In the German version, the recital concerned is the one that she gave in West Berlin in 1960, which spawned vehement protests. ``But why did I return here?'' Marlene asks Vivian, in response to the banners flying in front of the Titania-Palast reading `Traitor', and `Go Home'. ``You remind them of what they don't want to remember,'' responds Vivian.And despite being convinced that she made the right decision, Marlene cannot help but be nostalgic for what she left behind. ``Mother, have you forgiven me for what I did to you? Mother, I'd like to come back home,'' sings Judy.Throughout the course of the musical, the audience is shown in turn the femme fatale of Lola, the fragility of Don't Leave Me and the pacifist of Where Have All the Flowers Gone? The performance is brought to a close with Ich hab'noch einen Koffer in Berlin (I still have a suitcasein Berlin)- never failing to bring the audience's emotions to a peak.
