The Pianist at Park Theatre
There was not a dry eye in the house at the press night of The Pianist at Park Theatre. I was invited, and I went expecting a good evening of theatre, but I left feeling something like grief, mixed with responsibility.
The play is adapted from Władysław Szpilman's memoir, one of the most widely read accounts of the Second World War. It follows Szpilman, a celebrated Polish-Jewish pianist, from the first days of the German invasion through the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the deportation of his family and his years of hiding in the ruined city. The production moves through these stages with a clarity that is also filled with emotion. We watch a family's world shrink, one decree at a time, until survival is the only thing left to negotiate.
What this musical does best is show how ordinary the beginning of catastrophe looks. The early scenes are more domestic: a musician, his parents, his siblings, the rhythm of a household that assumes tomorrow will resemble today. As restrictions tighten, Szpilman does what so many did. He works, adapts and tries to keep providing for the people he loves. He believes nothing will ever become too bad anyways. The ghetto sequences are incredibly painful and real. This is one family trying to stay together while the ground below them disappears.
The central blow, the deportation of his family to Treblinka, is the most devastating moment of the story. Szpilman is pulled from the line at the last moment and survives, and the performance doesn’t let that survival feel like a victory. He carries the guilt of being the one who was spared. The actors give that weight the room it deserves, and it carries throughout the two acts.
The most radical and interesting element of this very real story is that Szpilman survives because other people choose to help him. Friends hide him because they love him. Late in the story, a German officer, moved by conscience, protects him too. This does not ever soften what came before, but it is a powerful reminder that moral choice remains possible even inside a machine of atrocity, and that those choices, however rare, matter enormously in the story of every life.
The cast carries all of this with remarkable honesty. The performances transmit feelings rather than simply talking us through the events, and it was impossible not to connect with what was happening on stage. The music deserves its own mention. Live music runs through the production, played by professional musicians within the company, including a pianist who performs whenever Szpilman
“plays” the piano. It means we do not only watch a story about a musician; we hear the beauty and pain of what was at stake.
I also want to credit Park Theatre for the way it welcomes its audience. The production is accessible for a wide range of disabilities, including provision for audience members with hearing impairments. It seems to be an established practice there rather than a one-off gesture, and it matters. A play about people being excluded from public life should be open to everyone who wants to see it, and here it is.
Now to the idea that stayed with me after the show. The Pianist is not just a historical drama inspired by a real account of WWII. Watching it in the world we currently live in is unsettling. It has become far too easy to forget what dictatorship and mass violence against civilians actually look like, and the play puts that back in front of us in human detail. Theatre is political, as all art is, and few forms are more so. A story like this works as a tool: it opens a conversation we need to be having.
The most painful thing about the evening was not what happened on stage, but recognising what we are still doing. Szpilman's parents believed what they were told. They trusted the words of those in power, and they hoped that reason would prevail. We do the same. We listen to what politicians and armed groups say instead of watching what they do. Today there are places where civilians are besieged, displaced, starved and bombed while the world watches it unfold on screens, and the language used to explain it is carefully managed. Governments with echoes of the ones in this story exist now, and we have watched them act with open intent. The question the play leaves us with is uncomfortable: what exactly did we learn and how are we making sure it doesn’t happen again?
That is why this production feels so necessary right now. It is not another lecture, but it simply shows us a family, a city and a series of choices, and trusts us to recognise the pattern.
On a practical note, the production runs for almost three hours across two acts with an interval, and it earns every minute. Tickets start at £15, which makes it one of the more accessible serious evenings of theatre in London. It is running for what’s remaining of October and the whole of November, and it begins its European tour from Park Theatre here in London and will move on to the rest of the continent!
Go. Take someone with you. Then talk about it afterwards, because this is the kind of play that asks us to not just spectate.
Edited by Aminata Ndiaye, Theater editor
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