Review: The Pianist Fails to Give Its Harrowing Story Sufficient Exposition

The program for The Pianist, now running at George Street Playhouse, contains the most voluble content warning I’ve ever encountered. “This production uses haze,” it cautions. “There are many sound moments with gunshots, bombs and explosions. There are prop rifles. Contemplation of suicide. Swastikas on costumes. Actors react to murders that are not seen on stage.” OK, but what about the play itself?

Emily Mann’s adaptation of Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir differs significantly from its source material, at least in form. Szpilman distilled his experience of surviving the Nazi occupation of Warsaw into a harrowing, introspective remembrance steeped in guilt and contemplation, which recognized both the indignities of the war and his sense of shame at living when so many others perished. Roman Polanski matched these emotions in his solemn, Oscar-winning film version.

George Street’s production, which Mann also directed, goes instead for maximum flash. Beowulf Boritt’s disassembling set gives literal definition to Poland’s devastation, although it often appears too open and airy to fully capture the oppression of ghettoization. Japhy Weideman’s extreme lighting cues show an elegant city plunged into darkness, a society stripped of its sense of hope. The promised loud moments manifest on cue, although they are rarely jarring enough to represent the sense of a people on edge, never sure where the next attack on their humanity will appear. Mann’s stagecraft prioritizes a visual world of disorientation and chaos, but these arresting images happen at the expense of character development.

We see Spzilman (Daniel Donskoy) and his family briefly in the prosperous days before the war and in the lean times that follow, but we never come to understand their struggle beyond shorthand. Mann’s script relies heavily on narration, which does more to establish the ethos of the era than define any of the individuals who make up the story. The direct-address monologues that Donskoy delivers to the audience rarely rise above a Wikipedia level of depth, and as a result, the dramatic figures remain largely ciphers. The characterizations of Szpilman’s two sisters, Regina and Halina (Arielle Goldman and Georgia Warner), are so indistinct that I could only tell them apart by their differing hairstyles of the actors playing them.

In an attempt to keep the proceedings brisk, entire years collapse into each other at a galloping pace. The play clocks in at 90 minutes, but this is a rare instance where greater breadth and depth are needed. The trials that Szpilman endures throughout his six long years under the Nazi yoke deserve to be fully dramatized, especially since the rare moments when the play hits its stride come when the audience can fully comprehend what’s at stake on a personal level. Brief scenes where Szpilman must consider what the war can do to his morality and humanity find a charge that is otherwise missing, as when he contends with an offer to join the ghetto’s Jewish police force.

As Szpilman’s father, veteran actor Austin Pendleton heartbreakingly shows how degradation chips away at the soul of a once-proud man. Tina Benko and Jordan Lage bring variety and flavor to a series of small parts. Robert David Grant is stirring in a brief role as an organizer with the Resistance. Other members of the large cast tend to give vague performances, although the fault lies primarily in the generalized nature of the script and direction that prioritizes a visual language.

The Pianist exists in a world defined by music—both its presence and absence. Composer Iris Hond supplies a nondescript score that cannot compare with the strains of Chopin and Schubert that occasionally fill the theater. The production’s one true triumph comes when Szpilman finally sits at a piano and plays a haunting rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor. Donskoy performs the difficult piece beautifully, and without a word spoken, we finally understand what’s been at stake the whole time.