Words can’t describe it

“Movin’ Out,” the Billy Joel-Twyla Tharp musical about five friends growing up in the 1960s, contains not one single line of dialogue. So how, exactly, does it tell its story?

“It’s a challenge,” laughs Matthew Friedman, the show’s lead singer and pianist. “But the fact is, Twyla Tharp’s choreography does all of the talking you need.

“The dancers are phenomenal talents. It’s a tribute to their acting ability, as well as their dancing talent, that they can convey this story without opening their mouths.”

The dancers told the story well enough to earn the show a 2003 Tony nomination for best musical and a Tony win for Tharp, one of the world’s top choreographers. The show ran on Broadway for more than three years.

Also, the dancers have a little storytelling help – make that, a lot of help – from two dozen Joel songs.

“Billy Joel is a master storyteller and very good at expressing emotion, mood and thought in his songs,” Friedman said by phone from a tour stop in Ohio. “It’s an overlooked part of his songs, what a fantastic lyricist he is.”

So when the story deals with the Vietnam War, for instance, the show has the advantage of playing “Goodbye Saigon,” which, in Friedman’s opinion, is “the best song ever written about putting the Vietnam War in perspective.”

Friedman’s part is called the Piano Man, which makes him the show’s Joel-like figure, pounding away at the piano along with rest of the band on the top level of a two-level set.

He comes by his Joel proclivities honestly. Friedman grew up two towns over from Joel’s Long Island hometown and loved his music.

“By the time I was 12 or 13 I could play all of his songs already,” said Friedman.

Yet he was hardly a Billy Joel clone when the idea of performing in “Movin’ Out” first arose. He was a Wall Street lawyer – one who played in a wedding band in his spare time.

A drummer he knew talked him into auditioning.

“Everybody else showed up looking like a cool rock and roll star and I walked in wearing my law suit and tie,” said Friedman.

He didn’t get the job right away, but he landed another nice gig: performing at Billy Joel’s wedding. Joel was impressed and within a year, Friedman landed the Piano Man spot in the first national tour.

He’s still pounding the ivories in the second national tour, which launched in June and arrives in Spokane next week.

“I do not intend to return to practicing law, if I can help it,” he said.

Joel’s music is the show’s main attraction, but Tharp was the one who came up with the concept.

The cutting-edge artist, known for blending ballet with pop influences, loved dancing to Joel’s music and began to dream of a complete dance show set to his catalog.

So she choreographed six songs and invited Joel to watch a videotape. He had rejected many previous “cornball” ideas for musicals; this one he accepted on the spot.

The show features five main characters from Joel’s songs, including Brenda and Eddie from “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”

“It’s about how the Vietnam War comes to shatter their lives in different ways and how they put their lives back together,” said Friedman.

He delivers most of these songs himself, yet he is not a Billy Joel impersonator.

“If that’s what they had wanted, they would have just gotten a CD,” he said.

“But I don’t mind if people say, ‘Oh, he sounded like Billy Joel for a minute.’ To me, that’s as close to perfection as you can get.”