All About The Piano
FEATURING: Rocco de Villiers and Lauren Botha
COSTUMES & SET: Hollywood Costumes
VENUE: Studio Theatre, Montecasino
UNTIL: April 12
RATING: ***
Between the very serious pianists with the biggest egos on earth we do find in classical music’s highfalutin concerto circle scene and those who entertain pub crawlers on honky-tonk pianos, someone like our own Rocco de Villiers who has been all over the place and stands his ground as an entertainer, with an added degree of natural showmanship.
“It all began in 1969,” De Villiers tells his audience early on in his latest show, All About the Piano.
As a 4-year-old in a crèche in the Free State town of Harrismith, he became something of a threat to the woman who was the caretaker of the kids, who wasn’t musically inclined at all.
His binding text throughout this performance of some 90 minutes is mainly anecdotal, and more specifically autobiographical, but never too self-centred which might have led to irritation.
His often wacky humour hits the mark, like the time when a member of his audience told De Villiers that he is a visitor from the Bermuda triangle.
The pianist was a bit startled and asked him to explain exactly from where within the Bermuda triangle he came from. He answered: “I live right in the middle between Boksburg, Brakpan and Benoni.”
Very likeable about De Villiers’s presentation is that he tells his own story within the framework of South African history.
Even to total foreigners this would be appealing since his personal touch – with some irony, satire and brief absurdity added in – stays truthful to this country’s chequered past.
But the question here is: shouldn’t this show, above all, be mainly about De Villiers’s piano wizardry? It surely is, but without the historical trajectory which is part and parcel of it, the musical content might not have been strong and dominant enough to instil total confidence in the concept of All About the Piano.
Seeing that movies had a dominant influence on the pianists’ career path, much of the musical aspect of the show reflects this.
So we do hear Lara’s Theme, Edelweiss and many others, but also his evolution into new styles like gospel, with a deep digging interpretation of How Great Thou Art, and even boeremusiek with which he grew up during dance evenings in the Harrismith City Hall on Saturday nights.
One of the intimate highlights of the show is a piano duet De Villiers plays with one hand performing on the stage piano and the other on a miniature Burmese piano.
What might have made the show more polished and greater could have been achieved by an overseeing director, who could also have extended the role of Lauren Botha, the attractive stage assistant, who is a bit under used.
The show is entertaining, but should have been a tad more classy.