Daniel Krikler takes lead role in new stage production of The Pianist

You might be familiar with Adrian Brody’s Oscar-winning film turn in The Pianist as the Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman and the almost unbelievable story of how he was saved, while hiding in the ruins of wartime Warsaw, by a Nazi officer.

Now, however, there is a treat in store, as young Jewish actor Daniel Krikler takes on Szpilman’s role in the world premiere of his landmark memoir, featuring his original musical compositions and with input from Szpilman’s son, Andreas.

The man they called “the Polish Gershwin” was once the most recognisable voice on the country’s national radio, playing both his own compositions and that of classical names. But when the Nazis rolled in to Poland— and after his entire family was deported to Treblinka and murdered — Szpilman hid in what had been the Warsaw Ghetto.

After the war Szpilman wrote his memoirs, which told of his extraordinary discovery by German officer Wilm Hosenfeld, who — in Roman Polanski’s film version — asked him to play the piano in a burnt-out building.

In London, after a brief try-out in Southampton, audiences will see Krikler talking through his memoir, in a new production written by acclaimed adaptor and director Thom Southerland. This approach means that Krikler, played guitar and trombone in his youth, neither has to play virtuoso piano — most of that will be played by musical director Malcolm Forbes-Peckham — nor, like Brody, lose considerable amounts of weight.

Birmingham-born Krikler has a quiverful of South African relations on his father’s side of the family, including what he thinks might have been his great-grandparents, who ran a kosher hotel in the resort town of Muizenberg.

When he was six, because of his father’s work as a consultant surgeon, the family moved to Kenilworth, in the West Midlands. He says the theatrical impulse came from his mother, who encouraged Krikler and his older brother to take ballet and music classes — and all such training took place in Coventry.

“I was very shy, but when I was around 14, I got some forms for the weekend school Stagecoach [aimed at kids aged four to 18] and asked my mum if I could sign up for it.” From that moment on, Krikler says, “I knew I had found my people.”

He and the theatre were hooked, particularly on the dance side.

Krikler jokes that the family were the only Jews in the village. “On my mother’s side, both her parents survived the Holocaust. My grandfather came over on the Kindertransport, my grandmother escaped from Germany through Switzerland. Her oldest sister and her mother were murdered in Auschwitz. So the heritage side was something that I have always known, was always aware of.”

In Birmingham he spent one year in the city’s Jewish school, King David, before the family move to Kenilworth. Once there, the Kriklers would go to Friday night services in the Coventry synagogue, and the brothers attended Sunday cheder. His mother, he says, lived in Israel for five years as a young woman — so being Jewish was a large part of Krikler’s identity. “It was a big part of my life,” he says, but admits that he was “embarrassed” about being Jewish, and felt that it “othered” him in his cohort of friends. “I desperately wanted to fit in. I don’t feel the same now.”

He’s obviously very aware of the recent debate about who can play what part — that is, whether only a Jewish actor can play a Jewish role. Krikler, who last year could be seen as Perchik in the Regent’s Park production of Fiddler on the Roof, has a nuanced take. He says: “[When there is a Jewish role], it’s really important to have those voices in the room, whether that is the writing, the directing or the acting. But do I think all the actors playing Jewish roles have to be Jewish? I don’t think I do.

“Fiddler was a great example. Everyone who played Jewish roles was either Jewish or had Jewish heritage; the director was Jewish and that was very important to him.” The Fiddler cast, he says, “covered the whole gamut” of Jewish observance and the rehearsal discussions were “really beautiful. But I don’t want only to play Jewish roles — and I don’t think being Jewish necessarily makes me better at playing these roles.”

Krikler studied at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama before becoming a full-time professional actor.

Now, in the role of Szpilman, he admits that he has found the rehearsals for this weighty production “very upsetting and very triggering”. Perhaps that is because of the intimate knowledge of the Holocaust in his family. The rehearsal space has been filled with pictures of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and Krikler sighs at “the sheer amount of loss… you’re doing a job you love in a creative space, and I am very thankful for this role. But a lot of the time, it’s not enjoyable, though I do think that’s right, and that it has to be like that.”

Szpilman’s story is the more remarkable because he became, after the war, one of Poland’s best-known composers whose work in popular song still resonates today. You can tell, talking to Daniel Krikler, how much affection and respect he has for the unlikely hero.

The Pianist is at the Park Theatre until 28 November