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Hamburg "Psycho-Musical": Actor Charly Hübner, Rocko Schamoni in "Coolhaze"
Photo: Marcel Urlaub
Among the many talents of Charly Hübner, his talent for music writing is a rather unknown one. He recently published his first book as a rock lover. It's called "Motörhead or Why I Should Be Grateful to James Last", was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch and has 176 pages. A key sentence in Hübner's band homage full of memories of his own youth days in the Mecklenburg province reads as follows: "For me, Motörhead is both a lifeline and a rocket in my ass, and a spacer between the world and me."
On Saturday evening, Hübner will now appear as the title hero of the theater premiere "Coolhaze" in the Hamburg Schauspielhaus - with a jazz big band. The theater announces a "politically explosive fantasy adventure" set in New York. Charly Hübner himself says: »› Coolhaze ‹is a psycho musical.«
Hübner is 48 years old, a phenomenally popular actor in film and television - and a highly acclaimed regular player in the Hamburg Schauspielhaus ensemble.
He is revered by an audience of millions as the Kommissar-Schlurf in Rostock's »Polizeiruf«, but recently he announced his resignation.
A few years ago he received the Gertrud Eysoldt Ring, one of the highest theatrical awards, for an appearance in a stage version of the Dostoevsky novel "Guilt and Atonement".
Just recently he was the acclaimed star of the five-hour evening "The Secret Agent" directed by Frank Castorf.
In “Coolhaze” he now presents himself in what is presumably a decidedly trashy show based on Heinrich von Kleist's more than 200 year old novella “Michael Kohlhaas”.
It's about good gags and entertainment
The spectacle was written and staged by three theatrical outsiders, who are eternally late in life: the bestselling author Heinz Strunk and his cronies Jaques Palminger and Rocko Schamoni, who are not so well-known outside of Hamburg and who call themselves the Studio Braun collective. What motivates Hübner to work with them? It is, he says, "an exchange with three great satirists," who all understood their fellow actors as a collective of authors. “The childlike gaze with which these three men look at the world makes theater really easy.” When he last worked with the major director Castorf, the work was “a common association, meandering and wandering”. »At Studio Braun, on the other hand, it's always about a kind of simplification, about good gags and entertainment. For me it is great to experience that in a row. "
In 2017, Hübner and the Studio Braun artists brought the Heinz Strunk novel "The golden glove" onto the stage.
In it he played the woman murderer Fritz Honka.
A critic from the »Nachtkritik« portal attested the performance, which was celebrated by the audience, with »clumsily provoked pleasure in the disgusting«.
For “Coolhaze” the theater is now promising “the story of a vindictive angry citizen” in the guise of a megalomaniac film project.
"The self-proclaimed genius director Florian von Richthofen has an action musical with erotic horror scenes in mind," is the summary of the material.
"Von Richthofen was able to win over the popular movie star Charly Huebner for the main role."
Instead of horses, the hero trades in motorcycles
How should one imagine this hero with starry airs, as a creep with a rocket in his ass? "I play someone who, at crucial moments, conveys to my colleagues that it is up to him and not the others," says Hübner. "Even so, he's just an actor who receives money for his work." In the play, the apparently crazy director Richthofen tries "to tell the story of the horse dealer Kohlhaas in a cool way," says Hübner. "Instead of horses, the hero now trades in motorcycles."
The Kohlhaas material is currently being shown in many theaters, most of the time the directors restrict themselves to a good retelling of the Kleist novella.
The Studio Braun Trio, on the other hand, links Kleist's Kohlhaas with Charles Bronson's vengeance campaign in the classic movie "A man sees red".
In Huebner's opinion, what makes the Kohlhaas rebel so interesting today?
"The question of when the individual's need for justice becomes a threat to the community," says the actor.
“In Kleist's submission, a free man feels restricted in his rights.
He believes he must take vigilante justice against higher powers.
You immediately think of corona opponents and lateral thinkers today. "
Would Kleist rotate in the grave in the face of "Coolhaze"?
Work on "Coolhaze" began more than a year and a half ago, the piece was supposed to have its premiere in 2020, but then Corona intervened. A few years earlier, Strunk, Palminger and Schamoni had already tried a Kohlhaas arrangement in Berlin. Angry citizens were also an issue in German society at the time. People "who rejected the state and talked about a 'dictatorship'", as Hübner recalls.
Would the poet Kleist rotate in his grave at the sight of the Hamburg update of the Koolhaas story?
"Maybe because of the shape," says Hübner in an unusually low voice.
“He was perhaps more pathetic and hysterical than us.” And yet he is certain: “Kleist would like our interpretation of the heroic figure.
Because Coolhaze also sees the world as a corrupt network.
Because when his wife dies, the string of his hat breaks too.
And because that's why he's blowing vengeance. "Kleist is a dramatist - you just have to watch the hit" Der zerbelte Krug "-" who had a clear sense of humor.
So maybe he would agree overall after all. "