Last week in Santa Barbara, pianist/actor/playwright Hershey Felder appeared in five showings of the production George Gershwin Alone, presented by the Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic. Felder’s inspiration for this play with music has roots in his work for Stephen Spielberg’s Shoah project and a subsequent visit to Auschwitz in 1995 to take part in commemorative ceremonies for the 50th anniversary of the infamous concentration camp liberation. While there he interviewed survivors, of which one told the packed audience that the reason he survived was because a guard insisted he keep whistling the theme from Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
This experience gave 27-year-old Felder the idea for a one-man show about Gershwin, which blossomed into over 3,000 performances worldwide of the production George Gershwin Alone. But, this isn’t the only composer he has developed a symbiotic relationship with. Last month in Santa Barbara, he presented Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, after tours on Broadway and at venues in London, Los Angeles and South Korea. Felder’s uncanny ability to inhabit the characters of composers, conductors, musicians and historical figures such as Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Stephen Sondheim have earned him an ever-growing collection of fans worldwide and subscribers to his website Hershey Felder Presents, of which a diverse collection livestream video and film productions are used by schools and universities throughout the United States.
In preparing the script for the Gershwin Alone production, which is directed by Joel Zwick (of My Big Fat Greek Wedding movie fame), Felder met with Gershwin’s heirs to receive permission to proceed with the project and compile as much information as possible about the composer and his brother Ira (the lyricist behind the songs). What developed was a kaleidoscopic view of his lifework which includes an American in Paris, Concerto in F and Porgy and Bess. The Gershwin family gave Felder’s project their blessing, with one request: that he not share the whistling Rhapsody in Blue story due to its somber connection.
George Gershwin (1898-1937) remains an iconic figure of musical Americana and his songs are some of the most hummable and admired of any genre, with works like Summertime, I Got Rhythm, I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’, I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise and It Ain’t Necessarily So. Felder’s solo show included a mesmerizing combination of acting, he looks a dead-ringer for the composer, and piano playing which enveloped a nearly two-hour monologue-style commentary about Gershwin’s early years, undiagnosed brain cancer and insights about Porgy and Bess – of which he and brother Ira insisted a performance at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 1936 be performed to a desegregated audience. It was.
The glue that holds together Gershwin Alone is Felder’s piano playing, which is powerful, poetic, sublime and evokes an aesthetic awareness conveyed by former teachers Jerome Lowenthal (The Juilliard School) and Menahem Pressler (Indiana University). Felder is a performer that defines the term multitasking as the show spins an onstage biopic of talking, playing snippets, singing and storytelling, often in tandem that feature scrumptious accounts of Rhapsody in Blue, Preludes for Piano, an audience Q&A and sing-along of tunes like Embraceable You that redefine the serious and humorous aspects of this composer’s life.
The audience left with a deep understanding of Gershwin and a renewed engagement to his music, of which this kind of acting performance is a rare commodity - as is Hershey Felder. This review was provided by the Editor and a roving Miroirs CA correspondent in Santa Barbara.
VIEW HERSEHEY FELDER’S WEBSITE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HIS PROJECTS.