Despite sharing the same name it would be a mistake to visit north London’s Park Theatre this week in the expectation that you are about to see a stage version of Roman Polanski’s 2002 triple Oscar-winning film The Pianist.
True, like the film this new show is based on the memoir written by the great Polish-Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, a book that became an essential part of the Holocaust canon when it was published in Germany in 1998. And yes, this stage production dramatises many of the now well-known events in Szpilman’s life when his chances of survival were vanishingly small.
It is not a spoiler to say it recreates the moment on September 23, 1939 when at the age of 27 Szpilman arrived at the Warsaw studios of Polish National Radio for his regular spot to play live to the nation.
As Germany’s bombs rained down on the city, Szpilman ignored the pleas of his producer and with preternatural self-possession ditched the scheduled Beethoven and single-handedly – or rather double-handedly – raised the country’s morale by instead performing a work by Poland’s greatest composer, Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor.
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