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Piano Smashers

Pianodrome, St. Oswald’s Centre, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

What to do when you inherit what was once a vital part of your parents’ world, but which played a key part in destroying it? The answer in Rupert Page and Rob Thompson’s moving meditation on legacy, loss and purging old demons is for the newly orphaned siblings to pass the item between them while all the while wanting to smash the offending item to bits. As the giveaway title of the duo’s drama makes clear, the fact that the hand me down in question is an upright piano doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. This is despite the potential for a dramatic exit that would make it the ultimate auto-destructive art action. 

 

Page and Thompson are more John Cage-like in their approach, in that, rather than making a sound, the piano is imagined on stage by Thompson. The sole performer for much of the play’s fifty minute duration, he relates the instrument’s history as it moves from living room to recording studio and back again. As the drama unfolds, the desire for violence against the piano is revealed as a mirror of the actions that made those inheriting it turn against it with such force. 

 

With Thompson as host, raconteur and wrangler of audiences, the emotional baggage gathered up sees scenes punctuated by a repeated mantra extolling the beauties of the instrument that may or may not be about to be consigned to the scrap heap. 

 

After runs on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Page and Thomson’s construction has found its symbolic home in Pianodrome, a bespoke auditorium made entirely of unwanted pianos. In residence at various Edinburgh spaces over the last few years, Pianodrome’s current home in a Bruntsfield church hall has seen it develop a full concert programme running alongside a bid to raise funds enough to support a permanent space. Over its brief weekends residency, Piano Smashers proved to be the perfect accompaniment.


The Herald, December 8th 2025

 

Ends 

 

 

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