
Reading from the book :"The Pianist" by Wladyslaw Szpilman, Orion London 1998, and St.Martin Press new York 1998. Excerpts Performed by Peter Guinness and Mikhail Rudy - piano. Manchester International Festival Director - Neil Bartlett The Times, June 20, 2009 The Pianist at the Royal Exchange, Manchester: theatre review Benedict Nightingale * * * * * Surely it's salutory to be reminded that, compared with the sufferings of other people in other countries in the relatively recent past, our current woes are about as terrible as Eeyore's burst balloon. Certainly, it's impossible to emerge from Neil Bartlett's production of The Pianist, which transforms Wladyslaw Szpilman's memories of life, half-life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto into a monologue with music, without feeling that most of us know little or nothing about atrocity, loss, danger, endurance, resilience and survival. Bartlett's production opens with a noise that prepares us for what follows: a blend of music, the rumble of invading tanks, the screech of trains on tracks. Then two black-clad performers appear, each representing the title character. Peter Guinness is Szpilman the narrator, prowling a stage that's bare but for a piano and telling us his story in a voice that's quiet, unsensational yet incisive. Mikhail Rudy is Szpilman the musician, still except for his hands, which range the keyboard as he expresses the minor-key grief, major-key dreaminess and each-key fever that characterise so many of Chopin's <b>...</b>
Wladyslaw
Szpilman
The Pianist
book
reading
Peter
Guinness
Mikhail
Rudy
Manchester
International
Festival
Neil
Bartlett
Warsaw
ghetto
chopin
Polanski
movie