Das Musical auf Berlin

When I was in Berlin last year for the IFA Berlin tech trade show, the hotel that was the center for our press group was a block away from a theater where what appeared to be a musical was playing, Hinterm Horizont.  I passed by it every day, had no idea what it was, and never had time to go.  When I got back, I checked into it to settle my curiosity.

It appears to be a sort of Mamma Mia-kind of musical, with a story build around already existing pop-rock songs by a popular performer, Udo Lindenberg.  From what I can tell after reading articles and watching a bunch of videos, he's a little like a more-pop version of Joe Cocker -- a "rock-poet" rough around the edges, with a brain that got fried a few decades ago by too many drugs and alcohol. (I don't know if that's true, mind you, but it's how he comes across.)  His trademark seems to be big dark sunglasses, a black fedora, and a wiggly dance move.  He's still performing -- he was in a German version of MTV Unplugged in 2011 -- but appears to have had his greatest popularity in the '70s and '80s.

(I use "seems" and "appears" a lot because most of the material I've found is in German, which I don't speak, other than basically "braunschweiger" and "bitte."  Using a few English articles and services that translate web pages, I've been able to piece together as much as I could.)

I've come across some video of the musical in montage sequences that the cast performed on TV specials, but what I've embedded below is a music video they put together of the title song, "Hinterm Horizont," (Beyond the Horizon).  I like it because it features Udo Lindenberg himself singing the lead along with the beautiful Josephin Busch who plays the female lead in the show.  Serkan Kaya, who stars in the show, doesn't get to sing in the video, but he appears in his stage role as a fictional Lindenberg in the "story" part of the video.  It's also an appealing number with an affectionate melody.

As far as I can tell, the show (which the video follows) is about a fictional Romeo-and-Juliet love affair in the 1983 between a young West German "Udo Lindenberg" and an East German girl, Jessy, which hits a hurdle because of the Berlin Wall.

Auf weidersehen.