We sat down with Niall Ashdown to talk about his new play Five Pianos, playing at Jack Studio Theatre from February 5 – 7. Featuring original songs, Five Pianos is a funny, intimate and honest story of piano as lover, as liability, as lifesaver. Tickets here.

You swore off the piano at nine, yet it keeps reappearing in your life. What is it about this instrument that refuses to let you go, and at what point did resistance turn into affection?

I’ve always loved the look of pianos – the fact that they are stately bits of solid furniture even if they just glower silently in the corner of the room. But obviously it’s the noise they make that draws me in. I think my resistance became affection from the moment I realised I didn’t need to play written music, I could make up my own; that a chord progression might be sufficient for me to derive pleasure from it. I still can’t really read music, which means that while I don’t think I’m a musician, I can play the piano. 

Five Pianos treats the piano almost as a living presence: lover, burden, lifeline. When did you realise you weren’t writing about music, but about relationships, memory, and survival?

I’m not sure that became clear until I tried to put this show together! All the songs in it reflect particular moments (and particular pianos) – and assembling them has made the importance of the instrument so much more pertinent. It is a familiar place to return to, somehow. Homely. 

I would add that it is also a wonderful way to procrastinate. I’ve wasted a lot of time noodling away on various keyboards, so maybe this is an attempt to pretend that all that noodling was in service of making this show. 

You’re known for improvisation and comedy, but this piece sounds intimate and quietly revealing. How did your background in improvisation shape the honesty of this show, and where did you have to let go of jokes to let something more vulnerable surface?

I have worked in improvised comedy for as long as I’ve been working. It’s a wonderful way to scrape a living. The seminal show I worked on was Improbable’s Lifegame. It’s part interview and part improvised show. A guest gets asked questions and a cast attempts to dramatise what we hear in a playful way, using music, theatrical styles, puppets, and various other approaches. There’s a genuine attempt to recreate the sense of whatever moments are described: and to do this without taking the piss or being too po-faced. Lifegame is a wonderful reminder of the commonalities of human experiences, and it’s made me realise that sharing my own stories doesn’t need to be indulgent to resonate with an audience. We’ve all, at some time or other, been there. 

Letting go of jokes isn’t too difficult to do. I try to stay light and playful even if there are moments where the story requires honesty,  authenticity and a degree of gravity. 

The piano is often romanticised, but here it’s also flawed, damaged, even uncomfortable. Was it important for you to resist nostalgia and show the instrument as something complicated rather than sacred?

Five Pianos is full of reminiscences, but I hope they’re unsentimentally told. I think a piano has always been a companion for me, a pragmatic friend I can talk things through with. Sometimes I over-complicate these conversations when often, as with even the most involved bits of creativity, what I’m striving for is simplicity and clarity, and to trust that that’s enough. 

This is your first solo stage project in some time. What did working alone allow you to explore that collaborative work perhaps doesn’t—and what did you miss about having others in the room?

Although this is nominally a solo show, I have emotionally-blackmailed trusted colleagues into helping me shape it. They’ve been brilliant and share a love and facility for improvisation. It means we can write as we go, and that we’re at ease with things not working. Of course once they’re gone, there’s the practice of just keeping running it through, and no one to kick my arse if that’s not happening. And I’m always having new thoughts, and the joy of discovering a spark of something silly or splendid with someone else is irreplaceable. The best work I’ve done has always involved a genuine sense of collaboration and fun and joy. 

The show seems to suggest that we all have a “piano” in our lives—something we leave, return to, resent, and need. What do you hope audiences recognise about themselves by the time they leave the theatre?

A previous show I did – Hungarian Bird Festival – was the tale of a week’s birdwatching with my Dad. The central theme was a love of birds, and audiences recognised a similar obsessiveness in themselves or their parents – but in their case it was collecting guitars, or old books, or album covers or whatever. 

In Five Pianos, the audience have laughed, wept a little (but in a good way), and I think recognised their own frailties, inhibitions and sillinesses as I’ve shared mine.