SYNOPSIS

Germany, 1938. Seventeen-year-old Magnus Volker and his closest friend, Abel Luther, want to continue fencing. When athletic activities outside school are banned nationwide, they enroll at Eide Sports School. Applicants first undergo a eugenic screening based on physical features such as hair color, eye color, and the shape of their heads, followed by a physical fitness test. The school appears to train outstanding fencers, but it demands strict discipline and obedience from its students. Abel was adopted by a German family at the age of five. He is Jewish, but his appearance meets the school’s Aryan standards, so he is admitted.

The school is run by Reinhardt Klehr, a former world-class fencer. He ranks the students by their fencing ability and rules through discipline and obedience. He recognizes Magnus’s talent and ambition, but initially ranks him last on the fencing team. Friedrich Kahl is an older student and the team’s ace. He believes that the only way to survive in a place ruled by power is to submit to it. Hagen Axmann wants to be a son his father, a colonel, can be proud of, but struggles between his ideals and reality. Jasper Müller, whose family ran a record shop, is an approachable and humorous student.

After Abel questions the school’s educational policies, Klehr has him and Jasper confined in the basement for two weeks. There, the boys discover a hidden radio and a Morse-code message, as well as a key to the cell.

The school’s violence escalates when the students are issued guns and ordered to shoot Jews during Kristallnacht, on November 9, 1938. Unable to carry out the order, the students hesitate. Hagen accidentally shoots himself in the leg. Klehr calls him a disgrace to Colonel Axmann and orders him confined in the basement. The boys use the hidden key to reach Hagen and stop him from taking his own life out of guilt. As they share their private wounds, their friendship deepens. Hagen deciphers the Morse code and reveals a message left by Reiner, a fencer at the school two years earlier, in 1936: “The truth is being concealed. Resist. End it. Stand together.” Following the clues, the boys find Reiner’s classified documents hidden in a book. They learn that the school is disguised as a sports academy but is actually intended to send its students into the military as soon as they graduate.

Abel and his friends make leaflets to expose the truth. When Klehr names Magnus the team’s top fencer and makes him captain, Magnus begins to waver. He tells Abel to keep quiet, fearing that Klehr may already know Abel is Jewish. Magnus helps his friends make and distribute the leaflets, but he remains uncertain about the resistance and is drawn to the success and privileges Klehr offers him.

As Abel continues investigating Reiner’s documents, he finds evidence that concentration camps have been established across the country, beginning with Dachau in 1933. He also discovers that Reiner’s letter was addressed to Friedrich. Friedrich admits that he and Reiner were more than friends. After Reiner’s death, Friedrich hid his identity and obeyed Klehr, fearing that he too would be expelled from the school. He cannot join the resistance at first, but when Abel tries to get the documents to the outside world, Friedrich gives him a way to contact a British journalist. Though he knows that he, too, could be persecuted by the regime, Friedrich begins to help Abel reveal the truth.

Klehr’s attempts to win Magnus over become more direct. He tells Magnus that if he wins the fencing tournament attended by Hitler in February 1939, he will be exempt from conscription and become untouchable in Germany. Klehr offers him special training, a senior position in the Hitler Youth, and a badge to bring him onto his side. As captain, Magnus joins Klehr in humiliating the students and makes Hagen repeat words that demean himself. When Magnus says that those who are dying may have had it coming, Abel feels betrayed, and the two friends fall out.

Abel tries to leave the school and deliver the documents to the British journalist, but he dies on the way. The students do not know exactly what happened. They mourn him by placing candles, while Klehr urges them to honor Abel’s wishes by focusing on their fencing. Overcome with guilt, Magnus accuses Friedrich of killing Abel. Friedrich tells him that he was the one who killed Abel, then recounts what happened in the cell.

Klehr had caught Abel trying to leave the school. Knowing that Abel was Jewish, he threatened to torture not only Abel but also the friends involved in distributing the leaflets if Abel made the wrong choice. Abel insisted that he had acted alone, but Klehr left him with the warning that he had to choose if he wanted to protect his friends. When Friedrich visited the cell, Abel told him where to find a book containing one final message and asked him to pass it on to Magnus. Friedrich told Abel to survive and left. After he was gone, Abel took his own life with a sword, hoping to protect his friends.

The final at the tournament before Hitler is not a sporting match but a real, potentially lethal duel fought with sharp, double-edged rapiers. Magnus and Friedrich face each other with their blades. Instead of stabbing Friedrich, Magnus knocks his sword from his hand and picks it up. Klehr declares Magnus the winner. But as Magnus steps forward to receive his prize from Hitler, he turns the sword on him. Klehr shoots Magnus from behind. Friedrich stabs Klehr with his sword, but Klehr’s gunfire brings him down beside Magnus.

The surviving friends scatter the leaflets. More leaflets rain down from the ceiling as the curtain falls.


REVIEW

When I first saw the title, I connected the German word Widerstand with the English word withstand and mistakenly thought it meant “to endure.” It actually means “resistance.” That misunderstanding made me think of two characters. Friedrich obeys those in power in order to survive, while Abel wants to expose the truth about the school. But Friedrich eventually stands up to Klehr, too. They are not simply opposites, one choosing resistance and the other survival. They endure and oppose oppression in different ways.

I enjoyed the use of fencing as the musical’s central sport. The fencing uniforms, swords, and choreography brought a fresh energy to the stage. They also helped show the school’s discipline and the hierarchy among the students. I know little about fencing and have mostly seen Olympic footage, so I cannot judge the performers’ skill with confidence. They did not look like expert fencers to me, but it would be unfair to compare them with professional athletes. Jasper’s fencing looked different from the others’ because he had never been formally trained; his stance and movements had a self-taught quality. Fencing worked well as a stage device. I was surprised that more musicals have not used group fencing in their choreography. Compared with a conventional sword fight, fencing looked more refined, almost like a gentleman’s sport.

I liked the music in this third production. I heard that the score had been rewritten, and I had seen reviews that preferred the earlier songs. The new songs worked well for me. Most sit in the middle register and use fairly simple harmonies, which made them easy to listen to. I also liked that the show used songs for much of the storytelling instead of relying on dialogue.

The broad historical setting felt convincing. The school’s eugenic ideals, the militarization of young people, the persecution of Jews, and Kristallnacht clearly place the story in Nazi Germany. Giving the students guns and sending them into the streets on Kristallnacht was enough to make them afraid. Still, I found it odd that the students uncover their post-graduation military service as if it were a secret plan. Conscription had already been established by 1938, and Klehr directly promises Magnus exemption from it. If the students were destined for more than ordinary military service—if they were to be placed in organizations such as the SS and made to take part in the persecution of Jews and war crimes—the scene on Kristallnacht could have foreshadowed that role. It would have made the plan more dangerous and the students’ conflict clearer.

I was struck by the fact that Klehr is the one who ranks Magnus last in the fencing team. It is not presented as a simple judgment of Magnus’s ability: Klehr chooses his rank and later raises him to captain. He uses the students’ pride and ambition to control them. I understood Magnus’s conflict between wanting recognition and wanting to protect Abel. At times, though, Klehr’s offer seemed to work almost too well. It did make clear how deeply Magnus wanted to succeed at fencing.

After Abel’s death, Friedrich tells Magnus what happened that night. The scene is followed by a childhood flashback that retells the story of Magnus and Abel’s friendship. Magnus once stood up alone to a group beating Abel. When he learned that Abel had been attacked because he was Jewish, the two grew closer, and Magnus taught Abel to fence so he could protect himself. This gives their friendship a history, but it also felt like the show was explaining again a bond it had already established. To me, it was a familiar kind of Korean melodrama, built to tug at the audience’s heartstrings. I wondered how German or other Western audiences might respond to it. I found the scene long enough that I dozed off, although I could hear people crying around me. It clearly had a strong effect on some of the audience.

By contrast, the scene in Act One where the friends stop Hagen from taking his own life was played with humor. A gun appears, but the scene seemed designed to show the friends’ bond. Friedrich and Reiner’s past in Act Two was much shorter than Magnus and Abel’s childhood flashback, yet it gave enough information to understand their story.

In the final bout, Magnus does not stab Friedrich. He disarms him, picks up his sword, and Klehr declares him the winner. Klehr has made clear that this is a live-blade contest in which the students can be injured. The fight looked more like a movie sword fight than a fencing match. Still, Magnus’s choice not to wound Friedrich felt dignified. It also made the contest satisfying: Magnus overturned the outcome Klehr had tried to control through his dirty tactics.

The ending, in which the protagonists sacrifice themselves, was expected. Hard times and cruel leaders lead to the sacrifice of good people. At the end, the surviving friends scatter leaflets, and more fall from the ceiling. The message of resistance remains onstage after the characters’ tragedy. The image brings the title Widerstand back to mind and leaves an impression without spelling everything out.

The curtain call was rather ordinary. The cast came out one by one, struck a fencing pose, hugged, and returned to their places. I thought it might have been more fun if each performer had used a different fencing pose. The final moment, when Kang Byeong Hoon, who played Abel, was carried out over someone’s shoulder, was funny. His struggling brought laughter from the audience.