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Creative Team
About
A Musical Adaptation of the iconic memoir
The PIANIST is an enthralling musical journey adapted from the acclaimed World War II memoir, featuring the brilliant melodies of the Pianist himself, Wladyslaw Szpilman. His indelible songs, presented here for the first time to theater audiences outside of Poland, underscore and uplift the play from start to finish.
THE PIANIST has been boldly reimagined and musicalised by Thom Southerland and Simon Lee (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s longtime music director) and is performed by an ensemble of 11 actor-musicians playing over 50 characters and a symphonic array of instruments.
Concept
It is 1945, the war has just ended. Wladyslaw Szpilman is struggling to write his memoir, but is besieged by doubt and fear until his memories – of family, friends, fellow musicians, and foes – all come to vivid life around him, cajoling and goading him to share his riveting story.
An ensemble of actor musicians enables us to see, hear and feel the vibrance of Warsaw before the war, the deep and warm bonds within the Szpilman family, and the terrors and trials of the war that Szpilman must experience on the way to his ultimate triumph through the saving power of music.
Throughout, we see Szpilman equally as a survivor and a composer, revealing his story through his melodies as much as through his memories.
Development
THE PIANIST was initially staged in April 2025 as a Workshop at Mayflower Studios, co-produced by Wolk Transfer Company and Mayflower Southampton, and starring Daniel Krikler as Szpilman.
THE PIANIST CAST ALBUM featuring 14 songs and 2 instrumentals from the play was recorded in January 2026 and will be released in May 2026 with robust promotion as befitting a newly discovered trove of indelible songs by an until now underappreciated genius.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF “THE PIANIST” MEMOIR
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When he was thirteen years old Andreas Szpilman discovered the unimaginable about his father from a book tucked away on a shelf. The book was Death of a City: Memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman 1939–1945, his father's memoir recounting his survival in the Warsaw Ghetto after the complete annihilation of his family during the Holocaust. At first, Andreas did not accept that this was his father's story, or that it could be his. But he still needed answers to the question: why is the whole family of my father dead?
Like many other Holocaust survivors, Wladyslaw Szpilman did not discuss the events of the war, or his trauma directly with his son. But Andreas soon became devoted to sharing his father’s astonishing memoir with the world.
Published immediately after the war in 1946, The Pianist was quickly withdrawn by censors in Poland. The memoir was not reprinted until over half a century later when Szpilman’s son prepared the memoir's 1998 publication.
Owing to Andreas’ continued dedication, The Pianist has since become an international best-seller with 42 translations, as well as an Academy Award-winning film.