The musical, based on Markus Zusak’s 16 million-copy global best-seller, has a book by award-winning best-selling author Jodi Picoult and Timothy Allen McDonald with music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson.
Starring WhatsOnStage Award winner Melanie La Barrie as Death, Isaac Gryn as Max Vandenburg, Jack Lord as Hans Hubermann, Cat Simmons as Rosa Hubermann, Leo Abad as Tommy Müller & Others, Matthew Caputo as Walter Kugler & Others, Oonagh Cox as Paula Meminger & Others, Michał Horowicz as Eva Vandenburg & Others, Thomas-Lee Kidd as Mayor Hermann & Others, Nell Martin as Ilsa Hermann & Others, Corinna Powlesland as Frau Holtzapfel & Others, Gleanne Purcell-Brown as Barbara Steiner & Others, Edwin Ray as Alex Steiner & Others, Timo Tatzber as Isaac Kleinmann & Others, and Russell Wilcox as Wolfgang Edel & Others.
THE BOOK THIEF is told by Death – they are haunted by humans, cataloguing the colour of the sky at the precise moment they carry each soul away. Tonight’s story belongs to Liesel Meminger, twelve years old and unafraid to take what matters: the red of a book found in the snow, the black of a novel rescued from a bonfire, the white of empty pages she will fill with her own defiant words. Down in a cellar painted in shadows, she reads to Max, a Jewish fist-fighter hidden by her foster family, and together they imagine a world lit by language. Above, Hans plays the accordion with fingers stained by tobacco and time, Rosa hurls curses wrapped in warmth, and Rudy runs beside Liesel, chasing a kiss that history won’t allow.
