Tobi or not Tobi

Tobias Hengstmann has been searching for a programme title that resonates with audiences - and ends up borrowing from Shakespeare. His brother Sebastian has been performing "Niemand mag Klugscheißer" to great success for four years now, and it was Tobias who came up with that title in the first place. Unfair? Those are the facts.

The new solo show grows out of a real speech: for four years, Tobias Hengstmann has delivered the keynote address at the Jugendfeier of the young humanists at the Johanniskirche in Magdeburg. Eight minutes, young people, the road to adulthood - and a constant urge to digress and muse about life without the time to do so.

In the show, that very speech is performed - and this time given plenty of room to breathe. Human failings, politics, neighbourhood, society: Hengstmann comments on what preoccupies him, partly through music, always with an eye on the present. Not from a high horse, but behind a microphone - and occasionally behind a lectern.