‘I had the most wonderful mother.”
Now there’s a statement you rarely hear in the American theater.
It’s how Mona Golabek opens “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” which she has brought back to Hartford Stage for a special summer engagement that runs through July 22.
Golabek’s love and respect for her mother informs the entire performance. Golabek appears as herself in short pronouncements to the audience at the beginning and the end of the show, but otherwise she is in character as her mother, Lisa Jura. Golabek relates Jura’s action-packed childhood journey from Nazi-annexed Austria to England in 1938 with awe and devotion.
The young Jura dreams of becoming a concert pianist, which is what Golabek became as well. “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” is anchored by Golabek’s renditions, on a Steinway grand that serves as the center of the set, of classical works that figure directly in her mother’s story. The most crucial of these is Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, which becomes as important a character in the play as any of the people mentioned in it. When the piece is finally played, with a pre-recorded symphonic backdrop, it’s not just a culmination of Lisa Jura’s hopes and desires, it seems to be a cathartic experience for her daughter Mona Golabek as well.
There have been some slight changes to “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” since it was last at Hartford Stage in the spring of 2015. A subtitle has been added to the title: “A Story of Music, Hope and Survival.” The producer credit is now “Hershey Felder Presents,” a new division of Felder’s Eighty-Eight Entertainment company, which was listed as the producer previously.
The theater’s playbill has the same articles as it did before: A timeline of major events of World War II, an explanation of the Kindertransport rescue effort that brought Lisa Jura and thousands of other children to England from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and a short note from Golabek describing her mother as “my best friend,” whose “legacy has inspired my music and my life.”
Elsewhere in the playbill, Golabek’s biographical blurb has expanded from a quarter of a page to half a page, largely so it can keep up with the successes of “The Pianist of Willesden Lane.” Golabek has brought the show to Los Angeles, New York, London and around the world. She has been nominated for awards. The book on which the stage show is based, which Golabek co-wrote with Lee Cohen, is now the subject of citywide reading programs.
The performance itself has improved. Golabek seems more comfortable onstage, more in control of this ambitious 90-minute intermissionless monologue-with-music. She knows when to pause in her story for maximum impact. She knows how to play up certain characters in her mother’s travails — often giving them distinct voices, as when she rasps comically as a one-eyed sea captain — so that you recognize these characters when they resurface much later in the show. Best of all, Golabek throws herself into her piano playing, adding extra layers of emotion and physical energy. These emotions range from youthful idealism to anger, anxiety, frustration, confidence and love.
Hearing all this done on the thrust stage of Hartford Stage, rather than in a proscenium-style concert hall, is a special thrill. After the applause had died down at Sunday’s matinee, Golabek expressed her happiness at returning to the theater, calling it “one of the great stages in our country, and the world,” and noting that “when I came here to perform for the first time, it felt like I was in a living room.” I can imagine some classical music purists taking issue with that very intimacy, and the tricky acoustics of the Hartford Stage space. But on a theatrical level, the crashing chords and echoey resonance of the piano add a lot to the suspenseful drama of Jura’s life story.
“The Pianist of Willesden” remains a vivid piece of live theater. The immigrant themes resonate differently in 2018 than they did in 2015, as do the anecdotes about helping and supporting children who have been abruptly brought to a strange country without their parents.
“The Pianist of Willesden Lane” holds up well to repeated listens.
THE PIANIST OF WILLESDEN LANE: A Story of Music, Hope and Survival — adapted and directed by Hershey Felder, performed by Mona Golabek — runs through July 22 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday at 7 p.m.; Wednesday at 2 and 7 p.m.; Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $90. 860-527-5151 and hartfordstage.org.
