Theatre Review: ‘The Pianist of Willesden Lane,’ a Jewish Girl’s War Story

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Charles Isherwood

Mona Golabek as a Jewish teenager who escapes the Nazis in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” at 59E59 Theaters.

NEW YORK---“The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” which opened on Tuesday at the 59E59 Theaters, tells the remarkable story of Lisa’s years in wartime London with an economy of means and a simplicity that only enhance the emotional effect. Packed with startling setbacks (the house at Willesden Lane is destroyed during the Blitz) and equally dramatic triumphs (against all odds, Mrs. Cohen has it rebuilt), it’s the kind of tale that would probably seem melodramatic if it were fiction. “Never stop playing,” her mother told her just before she boarded the train in Vienna, “and I will be with you every step of the way.” Lisa took the words to heart. Spiritually speaking, her fingers never left the keys, because only through her music could she maintain a connection to the vanished happiness of her Vienna childhood and the love of the family she feared lost forever. [link]