Mona Golabek's performance has a special scalp-prickling authenticity.
If you’re the parent of a kid who’s taking music lessons, or one who's just generally interested in music, you should be aware of the remarkable one-person show that just opened at Hartford Stage.
The show is “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” and it’s been out making the rounds in various cities for a couple of years, but this is the first time it’s been seen in Hartford.
It’s not an easy show to categorize. The lone performer onstage is Mona Golabek, who for most of her life has been a professional pianist. The spare set consists of a few risers, several large hanging gilt picture frames into which a series of images are projected, and a gleaming Steinway D concert grand.
Golabek -- talking and playing, sometimes simultaneously – tells us the true story of Lisa Jura, a musically gifted teenager growing up in Vienna in the late 1930s. As the story begins, Lisa is 14 and living with her family. Hers is a Jewish household of modest means; Lisa’s father is a tailor. Lisa is already a serious student of the piano, and longs to become a professional concert pianist. As we quickly learn, she especially dreams of playing the Grieg Piano Concerto one day in her city’s storied performance hall, the Musikverein.
But the rising Nazi tide intervenes, and that is what sets the story in motion.
I want to say a bit more about that story, but it’s important here to note the one thing that gives this evening in the theater a special scalp-prickling authenticity: Lisa Jura was, in real life, Mona Golabek’s mother. Lisa Jura died in 1997 at the age of 73. Mona subsequently wrote a book about her mother’s life, and, in 2012, with the help of director Hershey Felder, adapted that book into the present play.
Back to the story: In the aftermath of the infamous Kristallnacht atrocities of 1938, Lisa’s parents arrange for her to be placed on the Kindertransport – the now-celebrated initiative that took trainloads of Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to England, in an effort to provide for them a temporary safe haven. Once in England, the children were variously placed in private homes, orphanages, schools, churches.
Overall, some 10,000 children were taken in by the British, with the idea that once the war was over, they would be reunited with their families. As it turned out, most of them – including Lisa Jura – never saw their parents again.
Lisa is initially to be taken in by a relative of her father’s, but when she arrives, the relative pleads reduced circumstances and instead hands her off to a social agency. By and by, mostly as the result of Lisa’s sheer pluck, she is placed in a London school that is serving as a makeshift orphanage. The school is on the lane that gives the play its title.
Lisa is put to work sewing uniforms for soldiers. In her free time, she plays the piano that, providentially, resides in the school’s basement. Her playing entertains and comforts her mates, and, perhaps more crucially, also permits her to keep alive the keyboard technique that now, without a proper teacher, she must find a way to advance on her own. She evidently manages to do this, because several years later, in one of the play’s most touching moments, she is accepted to London’s Royal Academy of Music.
The play essentially ends as the war ends. We learn that Lisa eventually went to America, and married a former member of the French resistance, who had been charmed by her piano playing back in London. And, of course, she gave birth to Mona, as well as two other daughters.
The show is 90 minutes, with no intermission. It moves crisply.
Along the way, there is nearly constant music, all of which Golabek performs live:
Excerpts from Debussy’s “Claire de Lune,” Beethoven’s “Waldstein” and “Moonlight” Sonatas, Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” snippets of Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff – even a few languorous bars of “Strike Up the Band” and “These Foolish Things.”
But the central music, illuminating virtually the entire play, is the Grieg Concerto, Lisa’s signature work. It weaves its way in and out of the narrative, and in an especially vivid moment, provides a thunderous cinematic underscoring to the moment in which the Willesden Lane building is bombed during the Blitzkrieg.
In an inspired touch, the concerto’s closing pages provide a noble, affirmative, slightly nostalgic coda – musically and dramaturgically – to the show.
I want to be clear that when I say this would be a terrific show to take a serious young student of music to (the company is suggesting ages 12 and up, although I could imagine kids somewhat younger readily absorbing its message), I don’t mean to suggest that it is somehow only a young person’s play. It is a serious, stylish piece of work that even veteran adult theatergoers will be edified by.
It’s just that, in part because it’s about a young person, this work can speak across the generations, on the themes of art, loss, love. It would be hard to ask more from an evening in the theater, whatever your age.
“The Pianist of Willesden Lane” plays through April 26 at Hartford Stage.
Reaping What You Sow, Part CXLVII
In addition, to Apple, Angie’s List, Subaru of America, and a rapidly growing list of other companies and organizations, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is weighing in on Indiana’s “religious freedom” law. Below is an excerpt from an open letter written by the orchestra’s CEO. Note the reference to international guest artists:
As the Chief Executive Officer of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, I want to reaffirm our institution’s commitment to inclusiveness. The ISO does not discriminate in its hiring of staff, orchestra, musicians or guest artists, and our performances and programs are open to all. The recent passage of the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act has brought unnecessary negative attention to our state and its citizens. In addition, the economic damage of this legislation is real. Several world-renowned guest artists scheduled to perform with the ISO in coming months have expressed concerns about coming to Indiana in the future. The ISO is committed to providing our community opportunities to experience the most talented performers from around the world; that any artist might choose not to perform with us due to this legislation is but one example of its far-reaching consequences.
Invitation to the Dance
The restlessly inventive mind of Carolyn Kuan will be on view next week as the Hartford Symphony presents a program of music and dance on its Masterworks series. The program – presented April 9 to 12 at the Bushnell’s Belding Theater -- will include two fully choreographed pieces: Saint-Saens’ atmospheric “Danse Macabre,” and the concert suite from Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty.”
The former will be danced by Katie Stevinson-Nollet’s always-imaginative Full Force Dance Theatre; the latter will feature the forces of the Torrington-based Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory. The program will also include Prokofiev’s “The Prodigal Son.” Kuan, music director of the HSO, will conduct.
Steve Metcalf was The Hartford Courant’s fulltime classical music critic and reporter for over 20 years, beginning in 1982. He is currently the curator of the Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series at The Hartt School. He can be reached at spmetcalf55@gmail.com.
