Photo by Malcolm Smith Photography.
Victor Janusz has been a fixture behind a piano almost constantly since he was eight years old. He has played department stores, fancy parties, upscale restaurants, and even fundraisers for future presidents. During that time span, he has amassed plenty of stories to tell. He compiled those stories, mixing in original and cover songs, into a solo show called Hands Solo: Pianoman (directed by Lori Larsen). It ran for two weeks at ACT and wrapped up this weekend. I was there on Saturday night, for its penultimate performance.
ACT had the Bullitt Cabaret Stage set up like a jazz club, with tables set up around perimeter of the floor, and the feeling was surprisingly replicated effectively. I’m just not used to having a place to set my drink when I’m at the theater, though I am when I’m visiting someplace like Jazz Alley. For about eighty minutes, Janusz held court on stage with a mixture of very funny and very touching tales from his life. I particularly enjoyed the funnier stories because it was an opportunity for Janusz to showcase his natural charm. He has a self-deprecating manner that puts his audience at ease right away. He talks of moving to New York to “become a method actor but I only became a method waiter.” A few times, he, born to a Polish father and Mexican mother, would refer to his parents fighting as the “Polish-Mexican War.”
Victor Janusz’s instant likability insulates him from criticisms of humblebragging and namedropping (at least from me). He told one story of being a department store piano player for Nordstrom (“to facilitate high-end sales”) and getting compliments from Andre Previn for his rendition of a Hoagy Carmichael song. He, in turn, played one of Previn’s compositions from Valley of the Dolls, but said he learned later it wasn’t such a good idea to remind Andre Previn of Valley of the Dolls, but “he was smiling as he shuffled off.” He also talked about playing piano at a fundraiser for then-Senator Barack Obama in 2007. When getting his photo taken with the future President, Janusz said he grabbed Obama’s arm with two hands “so no one could accuse me of Photoshopping it.”
The night might have gotten its biggest laugh when he recounted a story of his sister saying that the sexuality of piano players always raised suspicion, but he was “saved” by Elton John, who was flamboyant and dated women (therefore he was straight). “I became the first person to ever be ‘saved’ by Elton John,” Janusz quipped.
It was a very fast 80 minutes where Victor Janusz played some of his favorite songs and told some of his favorite stories. I hope he continues to play Hands Solo (which thankfully has no references to Star Wars) in other venues, and if he ever wrote a memoir, I would read the hell out of it. He’ll surely continue playing piano, though, because, as he said in the show, it was the one thing he has remained most faithful to.
