Mona Golabek offers a beautiful story and a breathtaking piano concert in one incredible package

Some stories deserve to be told over and over again. Lisa Jura’s is one of them. Jura was a classically trained pianist who escaped Nazi Austria at the age of 14. Her daughter, Mona Golabek (also a concert pianist), preserved her mother’s story in the 2003 memoir The Children of Willesden Lane. Actor/pianist Hershey Felder has now adapted that story into a one-woman show starring Golabek, The Pianist of Willesden Lane, which is making its New York debut at 59E59 Theaters. It’s a captivating story of sacrifice, love, and war, set to the dramatic music that carried Lisa through the most destructive war in human history. Lisa Jura is the daughter of a Jewish tailor in Vienna in the 1920s, a time when café society and classical music reigned supreme. A talented young pianist, Lisa dreams of joining this world by making her concert debut at the Vienna Musikverein. Yet as she reaches her 14th birthday, this urbane world takes on a distinct cruelty. Because she is Jewish, Lisa is no longer allowed to take piano lessons. Her father loses his business, leading him to turn to gambling. One day, he wins one ticket on the Kindertransport, a program to relocate Jewish children to the relative safety of England. While he has three daughters, he can only choose one. He chooses Lisa.