2 Pianos 4 Hands, A “one-of-a-kind” Theatre Piece That Still Enchants the Audience
By traditional definition, 2 Pianos 4 Hands doesn’t qualify as a play — or even as a musical. On the other hand, its lack of pretension rescues it from the category of performance art. Let’s just call it a one-of-a-kind theatre piece — an international success story which came about purely by chance.
Watching Richard Greenblatt and Ted Dykstra — fine actors and impressive musicians — revisiting their 15-year-old triumph, you’re struck again by what an exhilarating, hilarious and truthful entertainment this is.
Many of us can relate personally to this warm and witty odyssey as we accompany two youngsters on their journey from childhood to adolescence when they were studying to be classical pianists. Their travails are marvellously evoked — coping with demanding teachers, parents and examiners, howling with frustrated boredom when confronted with pesky scales and bewildering time signatures, freezing with fear when exposed for the first time to audiences and adjudicators at the local Kiwanis Music Festival.
But although 2 Pianos 4 Hands will strike a particularly responsive chord with people who have studied music themselves, it also offers a warm welcome to all theatregoers. Greenblatt and Dykstra are the show’s creators as well as the performers. And they’re not really offering fictional invention here — not when they’re so obviously delving into their own pasts. And while they extract large measures of comedy out of these years, they also offer compassion and the wisdom of hindsight
The bottom line is that this show is the most personal of memory pieces — as touching and rueful as it is funny and evocative. So there is an unassailable moment of sadness in those scenes when, having turned 17, each of them confronts the realization that he will never make the grade as a classical pianist.
And how did chance bring this show about? In a sense, Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre was responsible. It mounted a children’s play called So You Think You’re Mozart and cast Dykstra as a piano student and Greenblatt as the ghost of the legendary Wolfgang. The two actors used to get together after a performance for a beer and would trade stories about their childhood days and the shared experience of taking piano lessons and aspiring to be classical artists. Then came the momentous night when the Tarragon’s associate artistic director joined them for a beer, listened to them trading musical memories, and pronounced: “There’s a show here.”
So Dykstra and Greenblatt started putting together the entertainment which became Two Pianos Four Hands, a show destined to become an international success story, chalking up 5,000 performances and a total audience of more than 2 million.
This fusion of music, comedy and drama showed extraordinary appeal and fluidity 15 years ago. It still does so today, which is not surprising given the fact that Greenblatt and Dykstra have such a uniquely intimate relationship with the material. In addition to playing themselves each actor must also assume a succession of identities — be it a mumbling Kiwanis official, a demanding dad or a crotchety Sister Loyola despairing that her fidgeting pupil will ever get this musical passage right.
Both actors possess both the technique, intelligence, and grasp of psychology to deliver their rapid character changes and serve the material’s vital emotional needs. Their musical contribution is also marvellous — their impressive performance of the Bach D Minor Concerto gives the show its essential bookends — but it also reminds us why Two Pianos Four Hands itself represents the rarest of vintages, one which eventually may prove irreplaceable.
During much of the show’s earlier life — which included a 40-week U.S. Tour and a successful British engagement — other performers were hired. And they were difficult to find. Dykstra and Greenblatt began feeling like near extinct species: good actors there were in plenty but they lacked the training and technique to handle the musical demands of Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin. So we must enjoy this wonderful show — currently on its farewell tour — while we know it still exists.
Ottawa, Jamie Portman
17 January, 2012