Three Pianos

The OBIE-winning hit music-theater event – that wowed audiences and critics alike in its sold-out runs at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater and New York Theatre Workshop – is a theatrical explosion of Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise. Filled with fantastical touches and inventive arrangements, Three Pianos is a colorful and imaginative evening exploring Schubert’s music, life, and times. Set on a blustery winter night, three friends, each manning a piano, lead the audience through fragments of Schubert’s famous work while grappling with fundamental questions about the nature of music and drinking too much. The three pianists slip into a wild reenactment of a “Schubertiad,” a musical salon party thrown by Schubert and his friends, connecting the two groups through the centuries. An evening of hilarity and heartbreak unfolds, in which the audience is invited to the party. Compositional mayhem, shifting rivalries, and some unfortunate butchery of the German language ensue.