Mona Golabek in The Pianist of Willesden Lane Essay

Mona Golabek in The Pianist of Willesden Lane - turn out ExampleBerkeley Rep offers an advisory somewhat both stage effect of potential concern to patrons health. This target has none. We dont offer advisories about subject matter, as sensitivities vary from person to person. If you have any concerns about content, please contact the box office. Mona Golabek doesnt just tell a great story. Seated at a concert grand, she accompanies her tale with music that infuses, illustrates, amplifies and elevates The Pianist of Willesden Lane to make the personal universal and some other generation so personal that you cant help but feel your heart swell in response. long music can do that. Skillfully blended with an affecting tale, it can do even more. If in that respect was a dry eye in the house at Wednesdays Berkeley Repertory Theatre opening, my own were alike filled with tears to see it.Each piece of music tells a story, Golabeks mother told her. She learned her mothers story along with keyboard technique in her piano lessons. Director Hershey Felder, who adapted Golabeks book for stage - and whose Eighty-Eight Entertainment is a co-producer - builds on that connection to shape the play and intensify particular scenes. Then he adds well-selected visuals to the sensory package.package. From the beginning, Juras woolgather is to make her concert debut with Griegs Piano Concerto in A Minor. Felder, best-known for his popular solo shows about composers (he performed George Gershwin Alone at the Rep last summer), uses the concerto to frame Pianist from beginning toend (Cohen and Mona, 45-49). The first consummation - brilliantly, probingly performed by Golabek - sets up the fraught conditions in 1938 Vienna. The second intensifies the dramatic perils of the Blitz. The third brings the piece to its passionateresolution. In between, Golabeks beautifully rendered pieces by Beethoven, Debussy and Chopin enhance the families and Viennas Jews worsening fortunes - as to ld by Golabek as the young Jura - and her escape by means of the Kindertransport program. Felder heightens the impact with archival photos and newsreel footage, projected in the large, antique gilt picture frames hanging about the midnight bluingstage. Golabek doesnt convey the comfort of an actor, but she grows more assured and riveting as she traces Juras life in London, take for granted the voices of the