Golabek, a celebrated concert pianist whose honors include a Grammy Award nomination, makes a gorgeous centerpiece of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor (a cherished favorite of her mother’s), with its plunging, undulating runs. Here, he and Golabek (whose disarming stage presence radiates authenticity) keep the storytelling understated, letting the drama of the events - and of Golabek’s playing - speak for itself. (Felder now runs his production company Eighty-Eight Entertainment out of Point Loma.) The piece is adapted and directed by Hershey Felder, the accomplished pianist-actor-writer and veteran of his own celebrated solo shows, including the “Composers Sonata” and other works that were favorites at the Old Globe. It’s remarkable to contemplate the fact that, just as Lisa learned piano through the ministrations of her mother (after the Nazis forced her original piano teacher to break off contact), Mona learned at the feet of Lisa, continuing a treasured legacy that survived the horrors of the Holocaust.Īnd yet “Willesden Lane” is also compelling in ways quite apart from those intimate connections. Through nearly the entire show, she portrays her mother, as Lisa grows from a scared but resourceful young girl into an accomplished and dauntless young woman and artist. But it’s also the story of how Golabek herself continues to stay true to Lisa’s resolve.īecause as we learn at the top of the show, Golabek is Lisa’s real-life daughter. “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” is the powerful tale of just how she managed to do that. Lisa clings to the final words her mother uttered to her at the Vienna station, as the Kindertransport rescue train readied to depart: “Hold on to your music.” Left behind, as the clouds of war gathered over Europe, were her mother and father as well as her two sisters - separated from Lisa via an agonizing parental decision reminiscent of something from William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice.”
In 1938, a Jewish teen-ager and piano prodigy named Lisa Jura was packed onto a train headed out of Vienna, grasping a ticket won by her desperate father in a card game. It’s a promise that has resounded through three generations over the course of more than 70 years, and it flows from the grand piano that Golabek plays with such arresting beauty during the show that just opened at San Diego Rep. She is also, as becomes abundantly (and movingly) clear, keeping a promise. When Mona Golabek takes the stage to perform the solo show “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” she’s not simply telling a story.
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