Subtitled "A Play with Music," The Pianist is adapted for the stage and directed by Emily Mann, whose credits include acclaimed Broadway productions such as Murder on the Orient Express and A Streetcar Named Desire.
An original score is by Dutch concert pianist Iris Hond. The project is in the hands of Robin de Levita Productions, Gorgeous Entertainment, and Wolk Transfer Company.
Daniel Donskoy (The Crown, A Small Light) plays Szpilman in the George Street Playhouse production.
Born in 1911, Szpilman studied piano performance and composition in Warsaw and Berlin. He worked at Polish Radio for four years until September 23, 1939.
On that day, he played the last recital of Chopin’s music in the studio of Polish Radio, which subsequently stopped functioning as a result of German bombings.
Szpilman miraculously avoided capture by the Nazis. In the final months of the war, he found shelter in the ruins of Warsaw and survived thanks to help from his Polish friends and a German army officer.
Władysław Szpilman. Photo: PAP/Stanisław Dąbrowiecki
For Emily Mann, work on The Pianist is a very personal experience. She told the media: “Not only is it a stunning story about the tenacity of the human spirit and the power of art, but it is also deeply personal. Since I was a child, I’ve been haunted by my mother’s family murdered in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.
"When I went to Warsaw to research The Pianist, I visited the Jewish cemetery and placed a stone on my great-grandmother’s grave. At that moment, I realized I, too, was a Warsaw Jew, and I had to tell this story.
"Seeing fascism on the rise again both in the United States and around the world gives even greater urgency to this play. We must bring to powerful life the call to action ‘never again.'"
Producer Michael Wolk has described The Pianist as “a soaring tale of survival and triumph through music, a riveting story that is fiercely present tense.”
He said: “Though set in the past, it shows us that just like today, worlds are destroyed when we demonize each other. And it gives us hope by showing how human connections and the power of music can transcend hate and fear and heal our hearts.”
The official opening night of The Pianist at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, in the US state of New Jersey, on September 29 will be preceded by three days of previews. The show will run until October 22.
After the war, Szpilman served as the director of Polish Radio’s music department for 18 years. He then founded the Warsaw Piano Quintet, which toured the world for more than two decades.
His compositional output includes some 500 songs, many of which became hits, and several symphonic works.
He died in 2000 at the age of 88.
Szpilman’s memoirs were made by Roman Polanski into the Oscar-winning film The Pianist.
(mk/gs)
Source: Broadway.world