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Mickey Jo
I feel like this is, and I take no pleasure whatsoever in telling you this, perhaps the most troubled musical I have seen so far in 2025. And really, when I say the most troubled, I'm just trying not to say the worst. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic here on social media and I was recently invited to see the, I guess the UK professional premier of the relatively new musical White Rose, which was seen not too long ago off Broadway where it did not garner exceptionally positive reviews. However, we have seen many successful shows rising from such disappointments and reworking the material and going on to find success eventually. Whether I anticipate that being the case for this one will be one of the things that we'll be discussing in today's full review. The show is currently playing at the Marylebone Theatre. It stars Colette Guittard and Tobias Turley as the real life historical characters Sophie and Hart Shoal, two young students who bravely advocated for their own moral beliefs and stood against the Nazi Party during the Second World War. Their actions would prove tragically fatal for them, but would have repercussions throughout history as they inspire future generations to stand against fascism and tyranny. If only it were relevant today. Oh wait. But when it comes to a new piece of theatre, though it can be a great true story and though it can be timely, is that always enough? Stay tuned. We're going to talk about it. In the meantime, if you have already seen White Rose either here in the uk previously in New York, let us know what you thought of the show in the comments section down below. And if you enjoy this review and would like to hear more of my theatrical coverage, make sure you are subscribed right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so that YouTube lets you know every time I post a new review, theatre going vlog or theatrical news recap or make sure you are following me on podcast platforms so you can keep hearing the sound of my voice talking about theater. Aren't you the lucky ones? Anyhow, let's talk about White Rose. So let me tell you a little bit about this musical then. White Rose tells the true story of a young resistance group living in Germany during the Second World War. Living in Munich in particular. The two of them were students at the University of Munich, which is where they were caught and arrested for handing out flyers which spoke out against Hitler and the Nazis. And theirs is a fairly small historical footnote, but they are the subject of an extraordinary amount of posthumous recognition. Like I said, something which the show sort of conveys a sense of. The musical tells the story of Sophie arriving to join her brother Hans as a student in Munich, becoming acquainted with his friends, finding out about their perspective on the war at the time. This being, I think, some of the show's most interesting material and the stuff that's really essential for us to be considering right now. How does it feel for people living through a dictatorship, living through a regime which is committing atrocities in the name of this greater purpose, living through this cult of personality and these lies and this propaganda machine? How do people rise up and glimpse the truth through that and escape from that and afford each other enough buoyancy to float to the top of all of the chaos that they find themselves drowning in? In times of political darkness and really grave conflict, there is much to be taken, the story of Hans and Sophie Scholl in terms of inspiring young people to be that important next generation who uplift and champion the morally upright truth, even if it is at their own expense. All of which is to say that this is a very important story to tell. It's one that needs to be handled with a huge amount of care, which I feel, and I'm sorry to say this is packaged within generally subpar writing, writing that feels disappointingly juvenile. And if this were to be a little historical musical license to schools, for schools to perform that I wouldn't have an issue with it. And I think that might even be the legacy of this show, and that might be a better forum for it than the professional stage. We're going to talk more about some of my issues with the writing and with the material, but I want to expand on why. I am sorry to say this because, and it's not just with this show, I have met enough creatives attached to what I think are ultimately doomed projects to know that there's always such profound belief in them. And it's not just the writers, it's not just the directors. It's a lot of these producers as well. So many of them, when you speak to them about these shows before you then see them, they truly think they have the next Hamilton. They have such a belief in their work, which I think is important and inspiring and brilliant. But I do wonder how they traverse these stages of development without anyone in the room talking about the glaring issues, talking about the elephant in the room when it comes to the inadequacy of the writing and though the two cities are culturally very different and can be creatively very different when you get a really negative reception in New York, the answer isn't simply to slightly rework the material and try your luck in London. Now, White Rose has been written principally by Brian Belding, who is a former educator. He was a history teacher in San Francisco, I believe, for like two decades before becoming a full time musical theater writer. He has written both the book and the lyrics for this production. So every time we are hearing words spoken, it's Brian's words we are hearing. I like that it makes direct reference to the writings of the White Rose group. Now, obviously there would have been a translation element here. And there is, as we know, always a little something lost in translation. Very often the result can be a little inelegant. I don't know if that is why in some instances the lyrics are a little clunky, a little repetitive, or if this has nothing to do with the elements that they took from those letters and it's just a symptom of the score. Because while I don't think the book is particularly strong, I think its bigger issues are in structure than in its actual dialogue. I think the lyrics, regrettably, are worse and are probably the most glaring creative issue among a couple of problems. Let's take a moment to expand just a little bit on some of the problems I think this material has. And I mentioned that I think the lyrics are the biggest problem. You can notice this when towards the end, these two siblings are incarcerated together. They are facing execution. They are young people. They really believed in this. They knew that this might be a possibility. There has to be so much going through their minds. Hans entire purpose throughout this has been trying to keep his sister safe. He made a promise to his parents. They are both going to be put to death for this thing that they believe in. And the song that they sing lyrically has a vast emotional mountain to climb. The lyric that we end up going with riffs on like, whether or not people care about their situation. I just don't think in that moment it's really authentic to have them looking outwards so much and thinking so much about other people when they're there together facing their imminent mortality. But regardless, the lyric is bad because they're saying something to the effect of I don't know if anyone cares, but if they don't care, then who cares? Do you care? I don't care. And we repeat it so many times, it's mind numbing repetition. Now, the lyrical mood in General, I would also call a little bit basic. We resort to a lot of metaphorical platitudes. We talk a lot about the stars and the sky. I look to the stars and I find comfort there. And every night when I go to sleep. And all of this stuff, we've heard it, we've heard it before, and none of it really speaks to their situation. None of it speaks to the world in which they find themselves, which is a very striking and interesting one. We have talked about war, we have talked about revolution, goodness knows, on stage before in musical theater. But so rarely do we hear it from the perspective of Germans living through the Second World War and what they think about all of this. And I do think right now, with the way that the world is looking and leaning politically, that that's a really important thing to articulate. How do people feel living inside of the bubble? Now, there's a couple songs that I don't hate, but they do still have little problems. The song Sophie New, which I believe they added for this London production, it opens the second act. This song is actually, I think, a great song. It's a moment where we have this trio, principally led by Hans and another young man who is working for the German police. But he is not the Gest oppo. He used to have a romantic relationship with Sophie, which was alluded to but never referenced until he just comes out with it. In this song, the recurring lyric is Sophie New talking all about the fact that when they doubted, when they wavered, she could see it the entire time. There is a soft rock underscore. We're going to talk about the orchestrations in a moment because they're a big problem. The whole thing is completely unearned. You can't open the second act with this epic ballad trio. It comes out of nowhere. It's not established. It would be a really winning moment if it came way later in the second act. There is another song which I think might be new for this production on the basis that I can't see it immediately on the cast recording, which you can go and listen to if you're interested, to listen to the cast recording. And it's a song sung by their teacher in Munich, who has a little bit of an arc in that he feels reluctant to help them in the beginning. He doesn't want them to bring attention to themselves. He thinks by trying to quash their efforts, he is protecting them. He has a little bit of conversation with a previous student, who is the young man who had a relationship with Sophie about this. And about how he had reported him for his subversive comments because he was trying to protect him. Whatever. He eventually ends up helping them simply because it is the right thing to do. And he is inspired by their noble courage. HE SINGS A SONG it's something like, they won't care what you have to show them until you show them that you care. It's all about the nobility of being a teacher. It just comes in the wrong moment because things are getting a little bit tense and things are getting a little bit busy. And so when he's singing this and they're moving around him on the stage, it just reads like he's just in his head, head thinking about what a great teacher he is and how important he is while they're doing important stuff and he's not really helping. I mean, I don't think it's a song that adds much anyway. And I feel like I can say this as a teacher. It feels a little bit like a former teacher writing a song from a teacher's perspective about how great teachers are, which, if you want to put that in, have the students sing about how great the teacher is. Don't have him singing about himself. That's not how you do to sir with Love. He can't. To sir with love himself. And in general, there are just too many characters who sing big power ballads. There are many lyrical ideas. And this is really, I think, an implication of the sort of shapeless narrative where they keep saying, we've got to do something, we're going to do something. The time is now, we won't be silent. And they keep being on that precipice of action for almost the entire duration of the show. And they eventually do something and then they're immediately arrested. But it's also frustratingly unclear that they haven't already done something. They talk about these flyers, they talk about creating these leaflets, they obtain a press, and it's all, you know, we get the tension of it. We understand quite clearly that this is a remarkable thing for them to do, that it's hugely dangerous for them to speak out against all of the state propaganda, for them to besmirch the government and the Nazi Party and to contradict their ideology with differing views. And so all the while, while they are compiling these and we see them making these and we see them bringing ideas together and coming up with a group name and deciding that they will be called the White Rose in the name of peace. And, you know, we don't understand for the longest time that they still haven't actually out leaflets. That. That is the thing that damns them ultimately, because it really seems like they would have done already and their leaflets have somehow already spread. So it's not really clear what it is that they are doing with them that is so different to the bold step that they take at the end. And I get that it's the idea of distributing them publicly and taking a more visible stand, but the narrative doesn't clarify that for us. The problem is, I think, that there's just not really an arc. There's a little bit of irritating juvenile comedy at the beginning that I don't think we particularly need. Gets really impassioned about doing something. We see people punished for speaking out. We see people forced to displace themselves through the show. It's all hugely high stakes. The high. The stakes are high going into it because we all understand what they're up against here. They don't need to do the labor of explaining that to us as an audience. But for this to be a great and important story, it needs to be a great story. And a great story requires there to be more of an arc. It requires us to start somewhere and to go somewhere. And this is really just one thing that happened and they slow it right down. Now, before we completely finish talking about the score, I did say I wanted to mention the orchestrations. In fact, first I should talk about the music, which has been written by Natalie Brice. And it feels perhaps surprisingly contemporary. I mentioned to you pop rock orchestrations before. It feels a little bit Spring Awakening. And Spring Awakening is so deliberately and willfully anachronistic, both in its writing and also in the staging of the original production with them wearing these period costumes, but with the crazy haircuts and holding the microphones, stood on the wooden chairs. Spring Awakening made an important point with the anachronism of that music, that these were young people who didn't fit in with the conservative attitudes of the times. They were ready to move forward. They were ready to be more modern. They were being restrained by these old fashioned attitudes. And that's not not the issue here. This is not about old versus new. It's about right versus wrong. And so I think you need something musically that is just going to allow the truth and the honesty of that kind of story and of those kind of characters to shine through. It needs to sound a little more timeless, a little more classic. Not contemporary. Not contemporary in an obvious way. For the same reason, I don't think I love the direction choice of allowing actors to use their own Natural accents because. And particularly for Colette as Sophie, who has the most important role in this show, show to be dropping consonants in delivery. It sounds a little bit too modern, but it also sort of lacks a little bit of pathos. Like, you immediately hear a difference between the likes of, we're going to do it. We're going to hand out the leaflets and we're going to do it. We're going to hand out the leaflets. Like, not to besmirch anyone's own accents, but I don't think it benefits the piece. I don't think they need to do German accents necessarily. I think Les Mis works, but I think it should be made to sound a little more of the era, or at least the way that we are used to hearing things of the era. Now, the direction is by Will Nunziata and the way that he stages this piece on Justin Williams, entirely decent and atmospheric, split level set design that sort of speaks to a crumbling nation in the final few years of the Second World War, is also a little bit simplistic and feels a little bit student production. Some of the choices that it makes, we have three or four characters because that's the nature of the. The cast makeup representing a class. And there's perhaps only one or two chairs on that of the stage. So the teacher is standing there and one person is sitting on. One person is standing behind. And it just looks a little bit unusual. The character of Lila, she works in a shop before she makes the decision to have to flee. But don't worry too much about Lila, because when it comes time for her to flee, she need only fold together the briefcase that constitutes her entire shop. That is like put on a table. It's really sparsely staged. And even the introductory moments where we have various different ensemble characters walking across, taking a pose and looking out with curiosity and concern and woe into the middle distance. It just feels pedestrian. I'm very sorry to say I enjoy the couple of occasions when they take the leaflets and they throw them out into the audience. I think this speaks to the kind of urgency and the necessity that the piece ought to convey. We ought to feel galvanized and inspired, like people have the power to make a difference. I don't know whether they could more strongly deliver the sense of the Shoals impact not within their own lifetime, but there is an illusion to it from Lila that their word is already beginning to spread. And as they are being sentenced, as they're being executed, we see her in the background putting leaflets over the back wall. But I think we need to hear something more substantial about how they were remembered and why they were remembered. As it sounds, I feel like the redemption of the show is that it's highlighting an important chapter. And if the theater fans who like these performers go and see this and find out about these two and find out about a chapter of history they didn't know about and get inspired because of this to be more politically engaged. And I think that's amazing. But I think there's a better version of this show that could more readily inspire people, regardless of whether or not they're young. I also think, as it stands, the material and the writing is just not strong enough to take care of this very weighty and important chapter. With these kind of themes. I don't think the one Jewish character offers particularly meaningful representation. It sort of just feels like a necessary nod rather than something authentic. I don't think the character of Sophie, admittedly sung very, very well by Colette, is particularly inspiring. I don't think this material offers her a lot. Aside from a couple of tickling, dry comedy moments and a very monotonous level of focus and dedication to the cause, I feel the character of Hans Scholl, played by Tobias, is wildly contradictory from one scene to the next. He rages at his sister for making things difficult, for causing a scene, for doing all of this when he just wants to try and keep her safe. And he would rather she just leave the country and not get involved with any of this. And then when she goes back with him to Munich, he is immediately agreeing that they need to do something bigger and bolder and more provocative. It just doesn't make sense. Again, sung beautifully by Tobias. I think he has real dramatic conviction in every scene, regardless of whether or not they make sense from one to the next. I think he is. He's doing a great job in terms of bringing depth and nuance, or trying to, at least. I will say. The number of times that Tobias has to say Sophie and or soph in this musical will remind you slightly of his recent role as sky in Mamma Mia. So get ready for that tonal whiplash. But there is a sincerity to what he's doing on stage. And there is a beautiful passion among many of the cast members in what Danny Colligan is doing. Danny Colligan, who I fear is playing a fascist, or was at least playing a radicalized young man the last time that I saw him on stage. There's also Ollie Ray, who I think is giving a decent performance as Frederick, the other character who I told you about and Danny Whelan, who plays another of their accomplices, Christoph Probst, who is also juggling being a young father, he brings such passion and dedication to his time spent on stage that you really pay attention to and feel for him. But the big picture issue which remains is that the writing simp of adequate quality to take care of this piece, and from there we can very easily fall into some clumsy pitfalls, like it seeming a little bit like a white savior narrative, like it feeling momentarily like it's romanticizing the idea of revolution a little beyond what might be considered appropriate. When they sing in the final song about like whatever your thing might be, like pick up a pen, hold a paintbrush like they were just put to death for speaking out against the Nazi party, and to then go to these kind of lyrics, it feels insincere. But unfortunately we can't really begin to have a conversation about sincerity, about the mood of the piece, about the implications of the material while we're still just trying to get through every scene. And it does sort of feel like these are scenes which were written with a focus that this character needs to get from there to there by the end and we're just gonna write them across the stage and they'll get there. And like I said, the meaning of this piece I think is important and amplifying this message and this chapter I think is very worthy. I just don't think sad there is really any amount of reworking of this material as it is that will make this fit for a professional stage. I think if this could be used as a brilliant academic resource then that would be fantastic. But as it stands right now, I don't think that White Rose is the musical that this story deserved. As always, however, this is just my opinion. Theater being completely subjective, I would love to know what you thought. If you have seen White Rose already, either a new year York or here in the uk, let us all know in the comments section down below. Particularly if you completely disagreed with me and you loved this show, tell us all about why. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed if you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel or follow me on podcast platforms so you don't miss any of my upcoming theatrical coverage. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey Day for ten more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre oh my Go. Thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.