What if Anne Frank had lived, if
she had had a daughter, and that daughter decided to tell her mother’s story --
the story of a young girl’s life torn apart by war, a story of tragedy and
eventual triumph – and tell it on the stage? The imagined emotional impact of
that staging is akin to moments felt while watching “The Pianist of Willesden
Lane,” which recently opened at Hartford Stage under the direction of Hershey
Felder.
The play – part reminiscence, part
delightful recital, acted out on a simple multi-tiered set (Trevor Hay and
Hershey Felder) dominated by a dramatically lit Steinway piano – is the story
of Lisa Jura, told by her daughter, Mona Golabek. It’s a reminiscence based on
Jura’s family in Vienna ,
the Anschluss that disrupted and eventually destroyed the lives of many Jewish
families and, central to the play, halted Jura’s piano lessons (for suddenly it
was a crime to teach Jewish children). It is also the story of the
Kindertransport that brought the 13-year-old, and thousands of other Jewish
children, to England .
At this point in the play there is an echo of the pivotal moment in William
Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice,” for Jura’s father has been able to obtain only one
pass for the train – so only one child can go. It’s a haunting moment.
Once in England, working first as a
maid and then in a factory sewing army uniforms, Jura, a child prodigy and
piano virtuoso, never lost sight of her dream of becoming a concert pianist and
playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto at her debut. This dream she eventually realized
after receiving a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London . Thus, there is a happy, if
bittersweet, ending to the tale, for although Jura eventually immigrated to America and married the French resistance
fighter who saw her playing piano at the Howard
Hotel in London , there are many who are forever left
behind in the darkness that was the Holocaust.
But the evening is also a recital
of sorts, for Jura taught her daughters, Mona and Renee, to play the piano, and
Mona Golabek became a renowned pianist in her own right and has enjoyed a
lengthy solo career. Thus, there is Grieg and Chopin, Scriabin and Beethoven to
be heard and enjoyed, the works interwoven – emotionally and intelligently –
into the story that Golabek tells.
Part of the fascination of the
evening is that Golabek is not a trained actress, but you’d never know that
from the 90-minute performance she gives, seamlessly morphing from her own self
into the persona of her 13-year-old mother and, along the way, giving us a
German music teacher, stuffy British bureaucrats and landed gentry, and a
woman, “more German than Jewish,” who runs a London hostel for child refugees,
where Jura finds shelter and friendship, until a German bomb all but destroys
the building.
The storytelling is intimate and
obviously heartfelt, and is enhanced as Golabek plays, for she just doesn’t
play but continues the story paced to the tempo of the music, which has been
selected to enhance and reflect the tone and temper of the spoken word.
The evening’s final moments,
enhanced by Jason Bieber’s subtle yet effective lighting design, end, or
apparently so, on a quiet note as the images of many of those who have figured
in the story (projections by Andrew W. Wilder and Greg Sowizdrzal) are projected
onto large, gilt-framed ‘mirrors” and Golabek says “good bye.” The lights go
down, there is applause, and then the lights come back up to the strains of the
final movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, which Golabek plays with such emotion
and fervor that you can feel the hairs on your arms rise with the electricity.
It’s a stunning coda to an entrancing evening.
“The Pianist of Willesden Lane”
runs through April 26. For tickets or more information call 860-527-5151 or go
to www.hartfordtsage.org.
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