A Promising Career Cut Short: Rose the Broadway Musical Rat is Dead

Rose, an albino rat and a promising young talent has passed in a tragic accident at the tender age of eight months. She dazzled audiences with her supporting role in the Broadway hit The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but unfortunately she met her untimely death just four days after making her stage debut.

The burgeoning starlet was scuttling along shelves of a trainer’s home when one of the metal doors came off its hinges and landed on her. Rose’s injuries proved fatal, and most tragically, just as she was beginning to come into her own as a performer.

Rose had nearly perfected the role, which required her to pop put of a cage and kiss the lead character, Christopher. And according to trainer Lydia DesRoche, had fate afforded Rose a little more time, she would have been spectacular. “She was really getting into the kiss,” Ms. DesRoche said to the New York Times. “She was just starting to open up.”

But success didn’t just fall into Rose’s tiny pink clutches. For the first few months of her life, she scavenged and squeaked in complete anonymity. The rat’s luck changed when she was discovered among hundreds of albino rats that were dumped on the West Side Highway near 57th Street last summer.

The city attempted to exterminate the rats but many were rescued—one of them being Rose, who was adopted and thrust into the spotlight by the trainer.

Rose is remembered as a feisty and precocious rat with a penchant for adventure and stage presence to boot.

Joining the likes of pizza rat, Ratatouille rat, and the rat that bravely fought that pigeon, Rose has undoubtedly secured her spot as an American rat icon. If we can learn anything from the Albino actress it’s that in life there are no rehearsals, so we must live every day like it’s our last performance.