THREE WOMEN AND A PIANO TUNER
Hampstead

HELEN Copper’s play, which enjoyed a critical and a popular success last year at Chichester Festival Theatre, is a welcome addition to the London theatre.
Ella, who spent 15,000 hours from the age of six to 18 practising the piano, has written a piano concerto. She wants Liz to play it and Beth to finance the orchestra and the hall in which the performance will take place.
Ella sacrificed her ambitions to bring up a child. She could have aborted the child and become a famous pianist like Liz. Or, like Beth, she could have had the child adopted, given up music altogether and married a millionaire and lived unhappily ever after. The play explores all three possibilities.
The script is also a commentary on the collaboration between author, director, actor and management.
Who actually owns a play? The person who writes it? The person who interprets it? The person who puts up the money? Who has the final say as to what is cut and not cut?
Lots of people are going to be amused by the row over whose name should be most prominent on the posters. The play is a conundrum. Let me give you a clue. Take a close look at the characters’ names. It could all be going on in the mind.
You may be puzzled why the play stops while a piano tuner eats an apple and come to the conclusion that it’s a joke at your expense.
Three Women and a Piano Tuner, complex and simple, enigmatic yet lucid, will have a special appeal to audiences who enjoy going to the theatre to think and like to have something to talk about afterwards.
Sam West’s production is finely tuned to Helen Copper’s nuances and the acting of Jane Gurnett, Eleanor David and Phoebe Nicholls is perfect.

Until July 9
020 7722 9301