Review by Kate Gaul
Will Pickvance – pianist, storyteller, entertainer – presents “Wonky” combining playful performance and engaging storytelling in this Edinburgh Fringe show. After seeing First Piano on the Moon last year (and loving it), “Wonky” was high on my list of must see shows. Put Will Pickvance in front of a piano and watch the extemporised fireworks explode. There’s no genre he won’t cross into or attempt to fuse with any other in a free-flowing equivalent to a musical waterfall. And “Wonky” is no exception. Not a show for families especially (although I think young audience members couldn’t help but be charmed by Will) ‘Wonky” is an antidote to the hustle and bustle of the Edinburgh fringe streets. A place and time to retreat, briefly, and be transported through the creative meanderings of a very talented man.
We enter the darkened theatre – on an empty stage sits an upright piano covered with a canvas. A ragged stool sits nearby. A tall lamp with fringed shade completes the picture. Pickvance enters and clicks his fingers. The lights snap black. He clicks his fingers again and the lights come on. He tells us that on a first date the datees minds are made up very quickly about each other and regardless of those thoughts must enjoy or endure the next hour together. We are a very small audience, and I wonder what he thinks of us. He removes the canvas from the piano with a flourish and describes the life of a gigging musician when they first encounter their piano for the night in a new venue. It turns out he knows this piano very well as it is his. And the lamp is his as is the stool. All part of the fabric of this event about to unfold.
In a lose collection of stories we learn about his childhood and playing the piano with his father. Something that his father had done with his father. A tradition. In doing so he deconstructs Goethe/Schubert song “Erlkönig”. “Erlkönig” dramatizes the tale of a father and his son riding home on horseback during a stormy night. The boy hears the cajoling voice of the Elf-King and attempts several times to alert his father that this evil supernatural being is attempting to take him away. As a young boy, his dad stood over the record player commentating in real-time on what it all meant; a father charging on horseback through the woods late at night with his son who is delirious. They’d perform it themselves - Will at the piano trying desperately to keep up with his dad’s theatrical rendition and uneven German. It is dramatic, gripping and alive. I wondered at this stage whether the show was to be about fathers and sons but it’s a loose thread. Pickvance does tell a story of visiting his grandfather in what seems like his end days and playing for him while under the influence of the drug ecstasy and his grandfather’s please for him to not let him die in hospital. The family stories are moving for all the reasons family stories are. But that’s not all…
Pickvance, we learn, worked briefly for an Elvis tribute band, as a resident musician at Skibo Castle in Dornoch, Scotland (it’s where Madonna got married to Guy Richie). He explains the beauty of “The Blue Danube”. He slams “Moonlight Sonata” through a jazz sieve and smashes “Like a Virgin” with a wedding march. Combining epic musical improvisation and intimate story telling are Will Pickvance’s calling card. It’s a brilliant hour of time standing still – I hear that one performance he went 20 minutes over time simply because no one told him to stop. I really want to see and hear more around the deeper thread of fathers and sons, of growing up gifted and what it costs to realise your dreams … but for now, “Wonky” is a generous gift for all those who can hear it. Recommended!
Image Supplied
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