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Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin
Reviewed by Bob Verini
Geffen Playhouse
Through Dec. 21
Jerome Kern, no mean tunesmith, had a famous retort when asked about Irving Berlin’s place in American music. He has none, the Show Boat composer replied; “he is American music.” In a similar vein, one might say that Hershey Felder has no place among performers of musical biographical monologues. He is the performer of musical biographical monologues: singularly, an accomplished pianist who tours the world with getting-to-know-you evenings introducing everyone from Beethoven to Liszt to Gershwin. Because there’s no one else in the market, it’s doubly disheartening that we aren’t likely to get another, more nuanced and flesh-and-blood portrayal of America’s greatest song man (1888-1989) in the wake of this pallid one, much the weakest of Felder’s attractions so far.
The setup is clever. The author of “God Bless America” and of literally thousands more ditties did in fact spend his latter years as a virtual recluse in upper Manhattan, serenaded by well-wishers during the holiday season. It’s also true that on at least one occasion — documented by caroler John Wallowitch, the late, noted piano bar maven — the singers were invited up for eggnog and song.
We become those Yuletide visitors, with Felder initially slumped into a wheelchair downstage left, stepping out of it to shake off the years and tell us his story.
But getting out of a chair doesn’t amount to a characterization, and listing events as if from a Wikipedia article doesn’t make for a story.
It’s hard not to suspect that over time, the performer has become the star to the detriment of the work. Felder’s early presentations George Gershwin Alone and Monsieur Chopin were titled straightforwardly enough. Then came the awkward Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. Now at the Geffen it’s just Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, rendering it somewhat ironic that an attraction purporting to present its subject full-out should fall so far short.
It’s not just that Felder makes no effort to transform his mellifluous baritone into Berlin’s high, reedy tenor (readily heard in his WWII fundraising musical epic This Is the Army). He doesn’t go for the rhythms, the urgency of a 19th century Russian immigrant who went on to dominate American popular song in the 20th through tireless effort, talent and willpower. The persona who glides around the Geffen stage in unearned melancholy seems to bear no relationship to the narrative, that of a kid knocking around the Lower East Side busting his ass to make a life for his family and finding inspiration in the hurdy-gurdys and honky-tonks of the saloon monde. Berlin was by all reports a driven hustler, but Felder turns him into a suave maitre d’. “And then I wrote….”
One with endless sang-froid, too. Can anyone get through 101 years without a shred of bitterness? Biographer Laurence Bergreen sketches out a great songwriter with almost no piano talent, embarrassed and ashamed all his life for depending on the help of a mechanical device and transcribers. Felder’s Berlin sloughs off his musical deficiencies as an amusing anecdote. In Berggreen’s telling, Berlin always felt as if he had something bigger, grander, more classical in him; at the Geffen he’s not haunted by anything of the kind. And when American music rejects him (for his hopelessly hackneyed and retro Mr. President, 1962) he just sort of shrugs. No recriminations, no qualms, no feuds, no feet of clay are permitted to interrupt the nonstop hagiography.
The show’s prevailing tone is tasteful cliché, from Andrew Wilder’s projections (Ellis Island immigrants; the Pearl Harbor attack) to the little stories accompanying each performance, often as not leading into an audience singalong. There’s only one real lapse of taste, but it’s a beaut: When Berlin describes the anti-lynching number he inserted into the Living Newspaper revue As Thousands Cheer, Felder goes into an over-the-top rendition of “Suppertime,” complete with African-American dialect. Since we’re treated to brief filmed performances by the likes of Fred Astaire and Ethel Merman, the decision to withhold the original Ethel Waters rendition, subdued and heartbreaking, seems a jaw-dropping lapse. Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin is one thing; Hershey Felder as Ethel Waters is quite another.
The great critic James Agee, summing up a 1946 Kern biopic, said “It gives just enough of the life and not-so-very-hard times of the composer to make you want to hear either the real story, or none of it at all.” That’s how I feel about Hershey Felder’s exercise in prim, passionless nostalgia.
Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Wstwd.; Tue.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m. (schedule has holiday variations); through Dec. 21. (310) 208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com.
