White Rose: The Musical at Marylebone Theatre – review

In 1943 at the University of Munich, siblings Sophie (Collette Guitart) and Hans Scholl (Tobias Turley) write and distribute anti-Nazi leaflets with their friends and their professor, urging their fellow Germans to take action against the regime. They come to be known as the White Rose. Their actions have fatal consequences, but one of the leaflets was copied and dropped over Germany by RAF pilots that same year, and the (mostly young) people concerned remain heroes nationally and worldwide to this day.

Ripe material for a new musical, you might think. This transfer of the off-Broadway production finds its European premiere at London’s Marylebone Theatre, with a couple of new songs to boot.

Musically, it’s the softest of rock: bright, poppy, strangely gentle at times, thrumming guitar with occasional stirring riffs, by composer Natalie Brice. Will Nunziata’s direction – about as non-stylised as musical theatre gets – does battle with Brian Belding’s emphatic book and lyrics (“The White Rose? I like it.”). Dialogue scenes are often quiet, dreamy, melancholic, and there’s no involved choreography.

It’s hard not to find the more RP accents of some of the cast jarring against the German setting for some reason, especially when the American-sounding musical theatre accents come out in song, and harmonies throughout are thin, despite the strength of all the individual performances. It’s a production which seems embarrassed of the leaflet throwing it must repeat a few times towards the show’s conclusion.

Sophie Scholl herself is played by a miraculously untouched Guitart, an odd island of stillness, doing its best against the blunt force of the writing and songs. Her Sophie is cool, serious, off, even downbeat, before the later tears. She can belt, too: the couple in front of me flatten themselves slightly against their seats when she first properly lets rip before the interval. Though a contrast with the more recognisable musical theatre efforts of the rest of the cast, it’s an extremely compelling performance. Other members of the White Rose get fleeting moments in the spotlight, though it’s quite firmly Sophie’s story: Danny Whelan as Christophe Probst highlights his children as his reason for action, Owen Arkrow as Willi Graf is reminded of the horrors of the front, Charley Robbie is resistancewoman-with-a-secret Lila, who inspires Sophie.

Their lives are played out in modest, furtive action against Justin William’s set of curved stone walls and rubble: the printing press sits at the back of the stage for most of the playing time, occasionally wheeled out. Alex Musgrave’s lighting design is largely understated, apart from some more sinister fun with beams of white crossing against red at one point.

White Rose’s programming here at the Marylebone Theatre, which makes up part of the Rudolf Steiner Centre, is partly due to last White Rose survivor Traute Lafrenz’s commitment to Steiner’s spiritualist movement and alternative medicine practice, anthroposophy. There’s a leaflet about her clipped inside every programme. Lafrenz is not depicted in the musical, but was romantically involved with Hans Scholl; also not referenced is Hans’ acquittal for homosexual behaviour as a teen, the trial for which Sophie identified as one of the key motivators for her later dissident politics. Though standout song “The Sheep Chose a Wolf” does allow in mention of Hans’ Hitler Youth troupe leader past as he gets his tortured heartthrob on (“I marched with that damn Nazi flag in my hand!”). It’s fun and silly enough that it shoots uneasy glances at the truth of how uncomfortable the enterprise of a musical about these real-life martyrs is, like a throwaway joke in Toast of London.

Religious texture (no sense of the Scholls’ or Graf’s convictions) is ironed out too, alongside anything too messy or interesting. Ollie Wray’s character Frederick Fischer’s arc is a by-the-numbers man within the system (Nazi cop!) pulled in two directions by his betrayal by Professor Huber, who dobbed him in as a student for regime-questioning, and his feeling for Sophie. Perhaps they could still run away to Switzerland together, they wonder. It’s fascinating that Sophie’s real-life fiancé was indeed a Nazi officer with sympathy for her efforts, who found out too late about her arrest to prevent her death, and married her sister. However, this thread is underserved by writing that makes for the simplest possible version of each character, with songs that sigh, injecting the most conventional dramatic friction possible.

A bolder, perhaps more tasteless musical of the White Rose story, with less plot and more characterisation, exists somewhere: as it is, it’s not quite odd enough to do these brave people justice.