White Rose – the musical. Book and Lyrics by Brian Belding, Music by Natalie Brice. Marylebone Theatre, 35 Park Road, London NW1 until 13 April 2025, 1☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner.

White Rose – the musical. Book and Lyrics by Brian Belding, Music by Natalie Brice. Marylebone Theatre, 35 Park Road, London NW1 until 13 April 2025,

1☆. Review: William Russell.

“Absolutely awful .”

The White Rose were a group of students in Munich led by Sophie and Hans Scholl who in 1942 started to leaflet the campus with messages attacking the Nazi regime. The leaflets were used by people opposed to the regime elsewhere and eventually the members of the White Rose were discovered, arrested, tried and guillotined. It is a much told story but this American rock musical tells if badly – every cliché of the genre is there, with characters standing centre stage belting out arias face on at the audience with the obligatory crescendo at the end crying stand up now, director Will Nunetiata has found nothing for the cast to do and they flail around aimlessly much of the time, while the been here, heard if before score by Natalie Brice is belted out in an ear shattering manner by an over amplified band. All this is hard luck on a patently talented cast led by Colette Guitart as Sophie and Tobias Turley as Hans. They can certainly sing – the star is for that – although they get little to chance to do any acting. But for the rest, the Nazis are nasty, especially the obligatory one from the SS, while all the students are idealists if not realists who toss copies of their leaflets into the audience – twice. Point made first time but it is that sort of a production. Meanwhile the local policeman has a crush on Sophie – he is not a nasty Nazi just a German doing what many Germans did at the time – and some token SS thugs stand around in the background just to show that life in Munich was hazardous.

The White Rose story has been told on film several times and at least once as a play but this latest telling is not only dire but does no justice to the students' memory. They may have been idealistic, and none too clever at concealing what they were up to, but they were risking their lives. Things are not helped by a pointless abstract set – it l;ooks good but means nothing - and terrible costumes especially those for the hapless Guitart. The anachronistic trousers are criminal. People like musicals may flock but even on press night when the audience is packed with chums doing their very best none of the arias got the standing ovation they were crying out for, subtlety not being one of the composer's gifts. One of the many problems is that the book tries to give five of the group and their tutor a back story each instead of concentrating on Sophie and Hans so that one gets really confused as someone steps forward for no good reason to sing their solo which promptly holds up the action.You are left trying to figure out they are while the leads are left in limbo. Guitart and Turley deserved better. Indeed so did the entire cast. The story ought to reverberate today as a reminder that the past can sometimes foretell the future – think Trump and Vance - but sadly it does not.

Cast

Colette Guitart – Sophie Scholl

Tobias Turley – Hans Scholl

Owen Arkrow – Willi Graf

Danny Whelan – Christoph Probst

Mark Wilshire – Kurt Ruben

Ollie Wray – Frederick Fishcer

Charley Robbie – Lila Randohr

Danny Colligan – Max Drexler/Anton Gruber

Thomas Sutcliffe – Karl Mueller/Paul. Giesler, Roland Fischer

Willie Robins, Nathan Sham – Ensemble

Creatives

Director – Will Nuniata

Musical Director – Caitlin Morgan

Orchestrator – Paul Schofield

Set Designer – Justin Williams

Costume Designer – Jean Gray

Lighting Designer – Alex Musgrave

Sound Designer – Dan Sanson