{"id":368,"date":"2023-12-10T17:09:51","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T13:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/?p=368"},"modified":"2023-12-12T12:07:45","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T08:37:45","slug":"berlins-subway-musical-captures-the-soul-of-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/berlins-subway-musical-captures-the-soul-of-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin\u2019s Subway Musical Captures the Soul of the City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Theater Online: <\/a>On April 30, 1986, \u201cLinie 1\u201d (\u201cLine 1\u201d), a rock musical set in Berlin\u2019s subway, premiered at a 367-seat theater in what was then West Berlin. In a rave review of the show, the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel praised the show, about a small-town girl who arrives in Berlin in search of her rocker boyfriend, as both \u201ccosmopolitan and exportable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe German musical has emancipated itself from its American role models in a clever, mature and very Berlin way,\u201d the paper\u2019s critic, Hellmut Kotschenreuther, wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLinie 1,\u201d which was written by Volker Ludwig, has remained a Berlin fixture ever since, and it regularly sells out at the GRIPS Theater, the independent playhouse where it has run for the last four decades and where, last week, the <\/strong>show celebrated its 2,000th performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not hard to see why \u201cLinie 1\u201d has been so well-loved and durable. Natalie, the show\u2019s na\u00efve protagonist, resembles Dorothy from the \u201cWizard of Oz.\u201d But her Yellow Brick Road is the grimy U1 subway, or U-Bahn, line, which she rides back and forth between the districts of Charlottenburg and Kreuzberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While searching for the Berlin musician who passed through her West German town and knocked her up, Natalie meets drunks, prostitutes, drug addicts and other colorful characters in the big, bad city. There\u2019s very little plot in this revue-like evening for 11 spirited performers. Many of them resemble quick-change artists as they fly in and out of Mascha Schubert\u2019s fabulously retro costumes \u2014 neon tracksuits, jean jackets, leggings, nylon ski jackets \u2014 to inhabit the show\u2019s 80 roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The protagonist of \u201cLinie 1,\u201d Natalie (Helena Charlotte Sigal), has traveled to Berlin from her small town to look for her rocker boyfriend, Johnny.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The performance that I attended a little over a month ago (number 1,994) was delayed by a half-hour because Dietrich Lehmann, who has been a cast member since the 1986 premiere, arrived late: He had forgotten he was performing that evening. While Lehmann got into costume, the audience grabbed beers and snacks at the bar. No one showed the slightest irritation at the delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the show finally got underway, the crowd was fired up, applauding their favorite sketches and characters, or singing along. (One singalong number simply lists the stops of the U1.) It was a level of audience involvement I haven\u2019t experienced outside of \u201cThe Rocky Horror Show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birger Heymann\u2019s score, performed by five musicians (billed as the \u201cNo Ticket\u201d band) is infectious and very \u201880s, with prominent saxophone, synthesizer and drums. But some of the most upbeat numbers deal with urban alienation, missed connections, insecurity and loneliness. Even at their most rocking and tuneful, the songs are often laced with vulgarity and shot through with anger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the showstoppers is \u201cWilmersdorfer Witwen,\u201d a beer-hall march sung by fur-clad widows (four men in drag) spending their pensions from their long-dead Nazi husbands at West Berlin\u2019s signature department store, KaDeWe. They see themselves as the defenders of an older Berlin and lament the good old days before the city was invaded by Turks, communists and squatters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith God and the press on our side \/ Our city will soon be wiped clean \/ Just like 50 years ago,\u201d they sing in a grotesquely caustic cabaret number. (Dietrich, the actor who arrived late, played one of the Nazi widows, as well as a racist man and a homeless drunk.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the theater, over 600,000 people have seen \u201cLinie 1\u201d at the GRIPS. The show has toured in Dublin, Jerusalem and Mumbai (as well as a 1988 stop at the Pepsico Summerfare arts festival in Purchase, N.Y.), and local productions have popped up around the globe, often in translation: throughout Europe and in Canada, Brazil and South Korea, often in versions adapted for local audiences. According to the GRIPS, \u201cLinie 1\u201d has been seen by more than 3 million people worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By some cosmic coincidence, a few days after the Berlin production of \u201cLinie 1\u201d surpassed the 2,000 performance mark, the city\u2019s public transportation service, the B.V.G., premiered a musical of its very own. \u201cTarifzone Liebe\u201d (\u201cFare Zone Love\u201d), a glitzy, hourlong show played two performances at the Admiralspalast, a theater nearly five times larger than the GRIPS. (It was also livestreamed on YouTube.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what has got to rank as one of the nuttiest P.R. stunts in recent memory, the B.V.G. commissioned \u201cTarifzone Liebe\u201d to win the affection of locals, who love to complain about Berlin\u2019s transit network. Interest in the show was sky-high, and tickets sold out fast. This approach to turning I.P. into art, or at least entertainment, is similar to the one Mattel took with Greta Gerwig\u2019s blockbuster \u201cBarbie\u201d: create something witty and self-deprecating about your product to increase brand visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The musical was developed by the commercial music producer Not A Machine (and its composers Fabian Reifarth and Kolja Bustorf) and the result is a very slick, Broadway-style product that befits the promotional nature of the show but is bewilderingly at odds with the B.V.G.\u2019s track record of dysfunction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The polished production was a far cry from the endearing scrappiness of \u201cLinie 1.\u201d And whereas \u201cLinie 1\u201d does not shy away from serious themes, or from exploring Berlin\u2019s dark side, \u201cTarifzone Liebe\u201d was a spectacle-driven revue whose catchy yet generic songs were punctuated by short scenes featuring puns and word play that would make the creators of Broadway\u2019s super-corny musical \u201cShucked\u201d blush. It was also extremely sappy; at one point in \u201cTarifzone Liebe,\u201d two characters croon about \u201cA one-way ticket to love and happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As fun and good-natured as it was, the show proved little, except that Berlin\u2019s transportation authority has a great sense of humor about itself. \u201cTarifzone Liebe,\u201d which features a subway, streetcar and bus as characters, ended up being a love letter to the B.V.G., rather than the city it serves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s remarkable about \u201cLinie 1,\u201d nearly 40 years after its premiere, is how much of the show\u2019s depiction of Berlin still rings true. The city is no longer divided, punk is dead and there are few Nazi widows left, and yet the Berlin of \u201cLinie 1\u201d is still shockingly familiar. Although it is a time capsule is many ways, the musical still captures Berlin\u2019s abrasive charm, and its kooky cast of dreamers and misfits remains recognizable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like with the city itself, you are won over by the show\u2019s rough-around-the-edges quality, its lack of sentimentality and its anything-goes ethos. Musical theater isn\u2019t a genre associated with incisive urban and social commentary, but \u201cLinie 1\u201d feels like one of the very few musicals that channels the soul of a city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: nytimes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLinie 1\u201d has been running since 1986 and just celebrated its 2,000th performance. Its cast of kooky dreamers and misfits still capture something special about Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,19,17],"tags":[129,130],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-bold-news","category-international-theater","tag-berlin","tag-musical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}