Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Low Down
In Piano Smashers, siblings are bequeathed a piano in their mother’s will. The piano, as well as its memory, is a burden neither sibling wants. Through the use of theatrical imagination, poetry, audience-participation, and sound work, Piano Smashers simulates the feeling of carrying too much and, of course, smashes a piano. A strange, intimate piece that could only be found at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Review
The stage Rob Thompson comes out onto is bare save for a piano bench. The set is so sparse, in fact, that we even have to imagine the green screen that is (imaginarily) taking on the visage of his home, where pictures of his children hang, and Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers. “It isn’t real,” says Thompson, “It’s a facsimile. But you can see that.” Also in the room is his piano, the Parker 35462, that serves as the center of the piece. Over the course of the play, we will hear tell of its previous owners, we will see it cherished and shunned, and we will even carry it across the room as a team of piano movers. Most importantly, of course, we will hear it be smashed.
It’s difficult to describe Piano Smashers in a way I find a bit refreshing. There are aspects of storytelling, wherein an enthusiastic and almost childlike Thompson tells us stories of Eric and Vera and their piano-playing children, his wide blue eyes shining, and his words coming in a way that you might be convinced he’s making them up as he goes. His excitement is infectious, so that when he becomes more serious, his grip is too tight for you to run away, and you have no choice but to sit in the discomfort of the moment. “This might be true,” he says of the story, “But I am making some bits up.” But the audience can see that.
Folded inside the theatre aspects, arriving without warning, are moments of poetry, as well as bits of dialogue that must be performed by audience members. It is communal, never allowing us to simply sit back and watch. As with any bequeathment, we must participate regardless of our wishes.
The script, written by Rob Thompson and Rupert Page, is at times vague and lacking in clarity. It would be all too easy to add ten or fifteen minutes to allow for a bit more structure. However, like the sound of the piano being smashed, recorded, as Thompson says, “for a stupid play”, something about this play reverberates. For all its cacophony, one can’t help but hear the burst strings released from their tension, feel the vibration in the breastbone of the sound board’s vibration. It’s the sort of thing that can only happen at a place like the Fringe. But you can see that.
