Review: Piano Smashers, EdFringe

This one-man performance describes itself as a show “in which a mother bequeaths a precious piano to her children in her will, insisting they keep it.” In reality it features several different stories of piano smashers, while its disjointed narrative makes it unclear whether it’s always the same piano being traced through time as in The Red Violin (but surely not, since each piano in this tale gets smashed) or different pianos (but in that case, it’s unclear how these stories intersect in any way.)

The show opens with Rob Thompson doing a bizarre pastiche of a warm-up act in a novelty jacket, receiving enthusiastic applause – certainly a way to prime the audience’s muscle memory. But it bears no relation to the rest of the show, and is the first of many non‑sequiturs. At one point two members of the audience are called onstage to perform sizeable chunks of the script, and this particular audience bravely and gamely enter into the spirit of the thing. However, it seems an odd choice to hand over the entire emotive power of the script to two unrehearsed strangers without the continuity of Thompson onstage to act as a companion and guide through the questions the show is asking. Although the two audience members genuinely do try, they’re pulled up without much direction as to their characters’ motivations and they are left merely reciting lines from pieces of card, with little emphasis. Why do this in this way? Is it a comment on audiences’ complicity as collaborators in the making of theatre? If so, the question is left hanging without any critical reflection to follow it up.

The most compelling part of the production is Thompson’s repeating refrain throughout of what the sound of a piano is like, metaphorically: a light, a razor, a horn, a tone… These interstitial pieces are delivered with simplicity and vigour. His turn beating himself up like a boxer (in the guise of the piano, being smashed) has an energy and force rarely matched in the rest of the piece.

To be completely frank, the show would make more sense as a two-hander. It also feels like a 30-minute script with some rewritten bits of filler, meant to be metatextual, which come off as odd asides, such as Thompson’s repeated reference that “it’s not really real, you know.” Indeed we do know; we all understand what a piece of theatre is and the expectations of dramatic convention involving the suspension of disbelief, but this theme isn’t really questioned or developed further.

I was surprised to hear that the show has been running for nearly two years, first because it’s billed on the Fringe website as a ‘new’ play, and second because the delivery feels stilted, as though Thompson isn’t quite sure of the material. In particular the mime and physical theatre lacks conviction, leaving the largely imaginary set without any sense of rich dimensionality – despite repeated querying from Thompson about whether we could see it.

There is a rather lovely moment of interpersonal connection at the close of the show which asks the audience to imagine their own inheritances, literal or metaphorical; to consider how these might be holding them back in a past that no longer serves them, and to discuss these with each other – but again, this is poorly integrated with the rest of the performance.

Piano Smashers is certainly an intriguing concept but its universal themes of love, loss, and heritage are sadly let down by its execution.

Written by: Rupert Page and Rob Thompson

Piano Pushers plays at EdFringe until Saturday 16 August.