REVIEWS REVIEWS
Family dynamics offer the playwright a wealth of material. “Three Women and
a Piano Tuner”, a new play by Helen Cooper, is short, pithy, and dominated
by a difficult subject; the consequences of a “loving” father. The three
women are sisters. All are vulnerable, have suffered emotional pain, but
each has dealt with it in very different ways.
Act I is set in Ella’s cold kitchen. The back of the stage is dominated by
an enormous stack of what seems to be folded sheet music on top of which, at
ceiling height, is a grand piano. The first thing we hear, and then see, is
the piano being tuned. Ella, played by Jane Gurnett, has taken her sister
Beth, played by Suzanne Burden, out for a meal, and the third sister Liz, played by Eleanor
David, is due to join them at the flat shortly.
Beth, who is married to a millionaire, has not seen her sisters for many
years and is a hesitant conversationalist. Liz arrives, the talk gets more
earthy, and then she realises that Ella has not popped the question to Beth yet.
Ella has taken ten years to write a piano concerto and wants Beth to finance
a concert. The three talk of the past and the experiences of a childhood
dominated by their father begins to surface. Beth has buried her feelings,
is in denial, and made a separate life. Ella has poured her pain into her
concerto, and talks of her beautiful piano tuner. Liz is blunt, bruising,
perhaps brash, and seemingly proud of her promiscuity.
Act II is performed in a Concert Hall where a rehearsal for the concerto is
to take place. A grand piano is in the centre of the set surrounded by
places for the orchestra. Liz is practising. But Ella is not happy with
Liz’s portrayal of the concerto’s theme which is the Stork. “Storks are
voiceless or nearly so, but some of them clatter their bills loudly when
excited”, Ella says to Beth, quoting their father. This sums up the way the
women reacted to their father.
But who is the piano tuner? A beautiful young man according to Ella. We
discern that all four daughters at one point were dressed in green gowns in
the clinic together. Only one went through with it. Another had her son
adopted. A third kept the baby. The fourth rushed out and committed
suicide. Their differing reactions to the consequences nearly destroyed
them, but in the end reunited them.
The play is billed as a comedy and there were amusing moments and exchanges.
It is well executed and thoughtfully directed by Samuel West. However, the
recurrent theme of frustration and sadness and pain, a legacy of the women’s
childhood, produced a more sombre atmosphere in the audience. If you were
reading this as a novel you would perhaps be tempted to read the last
chapter to understand more fully what it was all about and thus enjoy the
book as a whole. Perhaps the audience were concentrating so hard on trying
to discern the story that they missed the comedy. © JMB
“Three Women and a Piano Tuner” is in repertoire at Chichester from the 28th of May until the 3rd of June, 2004.
