Pianohood

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? The first line of Goethe’s poem Erlkönig (the Elf King), meaning “who rides so late through the night and wind? …

I first heard the poem as a song. A Schubert song. A terrifying baritone storyteller with a persistent hammering piano accompaniment. I was a young boy, my Dad stood over the record player commentating in realtime on what it all meant; a father charging on horseback through the woods late at night with his son who is delirious. We’d try a performance out ourselves, me at the piano trying desperately to keep up with Dad’s theatrical rendition and suspect German.

At the time, it felt like we were living the song. And thinking about this later as a Dad myself, perhaps we were kind of living the song all the way through my upbringing. I set out to reframe Erlkönig in a late 20th / early 21st Century story of father and son, with Schubert and Goethe repurposed for an Elvis tribute band and a private drinks reception, amongst other things.

I premiered the show under the working title Pianologues, but later changed this to Pianohood.

Review from THREE WEEKS, 2017

Will Pickvance loves the piano and the piano loves him back – it’s always been like that. He and the instrument are equal partners in this show, built around Schubert songs, that combines epic musical improvisation, hilarity and intimate storytelling. The funniest bit, for me, was hearing ‘The Trout’ with doorbell interjections, and I adored it whenever he broke into boogie-woogie. I shouldn’t tell you which dramatic Schubert song the autobiographical story is constructed around (spoiler alert: it’s not about a fish) as it would ruin the ending. But the theme is Pickvance’s realisation, as a child, that all families are different and then, as a man, that they are essentially the same. Bring waterproof pants and a hankie.