Review: ‘White Rose: The Musical’ ‘Not Only Deserves to be Heard, But It Deserves to be Sung and Sung Loudly’ at Theatre Row

Sophie Scholl. Hans Scholl. Christoph Probst. Karl Huber.
The names of those three students and one professor – anti-National Socialist political activists all – have haunted me since the days when I was a student at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.
You see, I started each and every day by waking up in my apartment in the Studentenstadt-Freiman, which was located on Christoph-Probst-Straße. I took the U-3 or U-6 or drove to the Uni, whose main building was located on the Ludwigstraße behind Geschwister-Scholl-Platz – literally “Sibling-Scholl-Place” – named in memory of Sophie and Hans Scholl. Directly opposite that is Professor-Huber-Platz, named in Karl Huber’s memory.
A fountain in front of the university is dedicated to Hans and Sophie Scholl. An identical one across the street is dedicated to Professor Huber. Hans and Sophie as well as Christoph Probst were executed on February 22, 1943, the day that this review is being published, 81 years later.
The cast of “White Rose: The Musical” at a recent curtain call
All four were members of die Weiße Rose, the White Rose, a non-violent and highly intellectual resistance group dedicated to the end of National Socialism and the Third Reich. Like them, I was brought up to believe in the Austria of Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven. They were what some might call good Germans, those who believed in a Deutschland that was the land of poets and writers, not one of der Führer.
Now there’s Brian Belding’s “White Rose: The Musical,” to commemorate their actions as well.
It may sound odd to some, a musical about students at a major German university fighting the National Socialist regime with the power of the pen, but that’s also the power of a musical, namely to inspire and unite people through its powerful songs and messages and convey emotions and intentions that words alone cannot achieve.
It is said that a king can only rule his kingdom, but a writer can rule the entire world through his writing, and as the students fall into this task – the words in their pamphlets, which borrowed extensively from Goethe and Schiller as well as the Bible and Aristotle, were, unbeknownst to them, being spread throughout not only Germany but other countries invaded or annexed by der Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler.
The Siegestor, crowned with a statue of Bavaria, sits between the two main streets and two main city districts. The Ludwig-Maximilians Universität straddles the monument.
The new off-Broadway musical isn’t the first dramatic treatment of the story of the White Rose resistance. While there may be even more, I’m most familiar with the 1982 Michael Verhoeven film “Die Weiße Rose,” the 2005 film “Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage,” released in English as “Sophie Scholl – The Last Days,” and the off-Broadway play “The White Rose,” by Lillian Garret-Groag, which I saw in 1991 and endured the tedium of lines that sounded as if they had been written in English, run through a beta version of Google Translate to German, and then translated back into English.
When we first meet Sophie Scholl (Jo Ellen Pellman of Netflix’ “The Prom” fame), she is getting off a train from her hometown and seems happy – perhaps a bit too happy – to be in Munich, considering the year is 1942 and Germany had already been engaged in a major war for three years and in a war on two fronts. Scholl appears more like Sutton Foster’s Millie Dillmount in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” as she arrives in New York City from Salina, Kansas, than, for example, like Chris and his fellow soldiers arriving in Saigon during the final days of the Vietnam War in “Miss Saigon.”
Belding’s compelling book and lyrics work best when combined with Natalie Brice’s moving score versus spoken dialog. To wit, the chilling rendition by Sophie’s older brother Hans Scholl (Mike Cefalo) is nothing less than an indictment of the German people, while “They’re Here Now” speaks of his wait for the dreaded knock on the door that could come anytime, a feeling that is also familiar to any Holocaust survivor or former East German citizen.
“Will they come today to get you, the way morning after morning they came for them, those who were your friends,” he sings mournfully.
Main building of the University of Munich or Ludwig-Maximiliäns Universität on the Geschwister Scholl Platz, named after Hans and Sophie Scholl.
Christoph Probst (Kennedy Kanagawa) is the only married student and is father to two children. His ballad, “Fatherhood,” is a bittersweet and utterly heart-wrenching soliloquy about his fate, and it’s worth noting that the father-in-law of the real-life Christoph Probst, Harald Dohrn, joined the group after his son-in-law’s execution and, in April 1945, was himself executed by an SS commando.
Lila Ramdohr (Laura Sky Herman) is the only member of the White Rose resistance group on stage who is Jewish, and she is presented as more of an ally than a participant. (In reality, Lieselotte “Lilo” Fürst-Ramdohr was far more active, although her many activities are beyond the scope of this review. However, in 1947 and 1948, she wrote down as much as she could remember from the initial period of the White Rose resistance, determined never to allow people to forget what her friends had done and sacrificed their lives for. Lilo lived until the age of 99 near Starnberg, and the BBC described her as having been a “spry 99-year-old.” She was not, however, the last surviving member of the group. That honor went to Traute Lafrenz, who, when she turned 100 on May 3, 2019, was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her work in the White Rose. She died at the age of 104 on March 6, 2023 in South Carolina, having emigrated in 1947.
“The Stars” is Lila’s song, a mournful prayer that her family might still be alive and they might both look at the same stars at night. Herman also plays Alex Schmidt, the group’s perky contact with the underground, who meets the Scholl siblings in a scene that can only be described as reminiscent of a “Hogan’s Heroes” episode when Colonel Hogan meets a senior underground contact and is shocked to find out that the contact is a woman.
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz photographed from an upper level of the main LMU building. In late 2023, the LMU was renovating both this fountain and the fountain directly opposite on Professor-Huber-Platz “to give it a new shine.”
Perhaps the most captivating song in the show, however, belongs to Frederick Fischer (Sam Gravitte), a completely fictional character added by Brian Belding to represent “the Germans who ‘knew better’ but ultimately did not choose to act out,” he told me.
“Air Raid” is the type of brilliant ballad that demonstrates he’s not just Rolf trying to court the 16-going-on-17 Liesl von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” but a realist. He readily admits that Germany will lose the war, singing “when we start to retreat and surrender, what role will I play in the end? I’ve swallowed my morals, beliefs, and the truth… how much further will I have to bend?”
The final and rather powerful musical number, “We Will Not Be Silent,” is an excellent summation of what “White Rose” the movement as well as the musical are about and akin to what I have mentioned numerous times “I will not be silent in the face of adversity… in the face of hate… and in the face of barbarism.”
University buildings along the Ludwigstraße at night.
While the music starts off more reminiscent of Jonathan Larson’s “Rent,” which also focused on a group of young people (although they were revolting against a different power), the mood becomes more somber as the show develops.
The role of Professor Karl Huber (Paolo Montalban) is too muted for my taste. Montalban is an extremely talented performer and could have done much more with the role had he been given the opportunity, considering that he was the only adult (i.e., non-student) German in the room, the actual Professor Huber having been known to be an independent thinker and fervent anti-Nazi.
Aaron Ramey’s commanding presence makes him well suited to portray Paul Giesler, the Gauleiter for the Gau München-Oberbayern as well as Karl Mueller, a friend of Professor Huber’s who is involved in another resistance group, and Cole Thompson’s Willi Graf is competent but probably would never have uttered the phrase, “What the fuck is going on?” although I could see him saying the German equivalent of that phrase, which in English would be, “What the devil is going on?” Cal Mitchell as the Gestapo officer Max Drexler, however, seems to have little feeling for how a member of the Geheime Staatspolizei would comport himself, which doesn’t give the audience a sense of the terror that the official secret police organization of Germany under Adolf Hitler unleashed on the populace.
The Munich skyline, with its famed Zwiebelturn, the onion domes of the Frauenkirche, a Gothic cathedral was commissioned by Duke Sigismund and the people of Munich, and built in the 15th century.
At the very end, perhaps as an homage to the millions of copies of the “Manifesto of the Students of Munich” that had been smuggled out of Germany to the Allied forces and then air-dropped over Germany, the cast throws hundreds of leaflets with excerpts from each of the group’s six pamphlets into the air towards the audience.
The story and the underlying message of “White Rose” not only deserves to be heard, but it deserves to be sung and sung loudly, and that is exactly what has been so admirably accomplished here. And, to cite one of Karl Marx’ most famous quotes, “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” Perhaps today, we are living through the second repeat cycle.
THE DETAILS
The White Rose
Limited engagement through March 28, 2024
Theatre Row
410 West 42 Street
New York, N.Y. 10036
www.whiterosethemusical.com
Running time: 90 min.
 
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich
(Photos: Accura Media Group)