The extraordinary story of Wladyslaw Szpilman's survival of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw is best known through the Roman Polanski movie. But this two-man presentation of Szpilman's story, as part of the Manchester International festival, embodies an idea only partially apparent in the film: that the mental discipline inherent in music is a vital weapon in conquering adversity.
Part of the evening's success admittedly lies in the specificity of the site chosen by director Neil Bartlett. We make our way past a disused station, empty railway sidings, an abandoned truck: not just gaunt reminders of Manchester's industrial past, but bleakly subliminal echoes of the Holocaust. Proceeding up a flight of stairs, we then find ourselves in a large, oak-beamed 1830 warehouse. As the sombrely clad Peter Guinness and Mikhail Rudy, actor and pianist respectively, take over the space, the past acquires a tangible reality.
In the film, of course, we saw Szpilman's story grippingly enacted. Here we become engrossed by his own words and observe, in Guinness's subtle performance, his sardonic humour. Forced to abandon his life as a concert pianist and become a diversionary ivory-tinkler in ghetto cafes, Szpilman claims to have lost his faith in the musicality of the Jews. His irony acquires Swiftian savagery when, describing how a group of Jewish orphans were marched to their deaths by protective guards, he remarks that "the Germans always had a great love of children". But there is tragic melancholy in his account of his father assiduously dividing a piece of cream caramel into six pieces for the family: "That," says Szpilman sadly, "was our last meal together."
What almost defies belief is Szpilman's endurance after his family had been transported to the death camps. In the movie, his survival is attributed to a mixture of the Warsaw underground, a German officer and his tenacious character. But here music becomes the crucial symbol of his strenuous self-discipline. "In my mind," says Szpilman, "I went over all the compositions I'd ever played, bar by bar." And, as we hear the brooding Mikhail Rudy magnificently play a succession of Chopin preludes and nocturnes, it is as if everything going on in Szpilman's head is made manifest. Less remarked upon is that he also ran mentally through all the English books he'd ever read. Art, Bartlett's fine production implies, may not be able to assuage grievous human loss. It can, however, be a moving source of individual salvation.
· Until July 15. Box office: 0871 230 1888.
