Is Irving Berlin the most prolific composer Hershey Felder has ever played?
“It depends on what prolific means,” says the pianist, actor and writer whose string of theatrical concerts have seen him playing everyone from Beethoven to Chopin to Leonard Bernstein. “But Berlin did live to be over 100 and wrote over 1,500 songs.”
But what made the composer of “How Deep Is the Ocean?” and “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” a natural for Felder’s patented, bio-musical treatment is that “his songs were stories. He was a storyteller.”
“Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin” has a special summer engagement June 21 to 30 at Hartford Stage, where Felder has performed many times. A few weeks later, the show will be at Westport Country Playhouse from July 16 through Aug. 3.
The play-with-music begins in 1988, the year Berlin died.
“It tells his story from when he was 55 years old to 101,” Felder says. “The main character is 55, touring the USO during the second World War.”
A key scenario in Felder’s script is “based on an evening that actually did happen. He was quite old when it happened.”
A bitter Berlin is castigating Christmas carolers who’ve sung outside his Manhattan home. He complains that they don’t understand the true meaning of his greatest hit: “White Christmas.”
Felder explains Berlin’s curmudgeonly attitude late in his career as his frustration with a world that’s changed around him.
“What’s patriotic has changed. What’s popular has changed. For 60 years Irving Berlin was the voice of America, but he couldn’t make the jump to rock and roll. He wasn’t necessarily vain, but he felt the world had turned on him.”
In Felder’s portrayal, Berlin “can be quite brassy, but never inelegant. He’s never rude. He may be a tough businessman, but that’s different.”
“I present the material in the way he presented it,” Felder says. “His songs were so relevant to what was going on in his life. He was very specific about what he heard in his head.”
Other Berlin classics referenced in the show include “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “What’ll I Do?,” “God Bless America” and “Always.” There are 26 full songs performed in the show.
When crafting his biographical shows, Felder says, “I try not to create a false drama. Who they slept with is not relevant, unless it’s central to their work. This one is all crystal clear because Irving Berlin was a songwriter. It’s about songwriting, how the songs influenced the travelogue of his life.”
There’s plenty of mirth, some of it in historically accurate bad taste, amid the midlife crises and lapses of confidence.
“The Jewish stuff is hysterical. There is sexist stuff; he was famous for singing dirty songs. A lot of it is patriotic, like the show he did ‘This Is the Army.’ Patriotism is infused in everything he did.”
Felder has been performing the Berlin show for five years, and it has evolved. Some of his research involved firsthand interviews with Berlin’s family.
“I learned a bunch of songs that were in the show at first, but then couldn’t be in the show because they didn’t advance the story. I have to be very judicious.”
How does Felder’s portrayal of Irving Berlin compare with another popular songwriter of the 1920s and ’30s that he’s impersonated — George Gershwin?
“They’re not similar at all. Gershwin was this brash pianist and singer. Berlin was quiet. He did have great respect for Gershwin. They were friends. The last photo taken of George Gershwin was a self of George and Ira Gershwin with Irving Berlin.”
When bringing composers to life onstage, Felder finds that “the idea is not to be him, but suggest him. Create an impression.”
In creating solo piano arrangements that capture the essence of the composers, “I use my ears. I don’t necessarily play like Berlin himself. I think there was a lot of jazz improvisation.”
One big distinction is that Felder sings Berlin as well as plays Berlin. Most of the other composers he has portrayed didn’t write music with lyrics.
“I’m singing everything in his style, though I’m actually a baritone.”
The last time Felder was at Hartford Stage, performing “The Great Tchaikovsky” in 2017, the big news was that he planned to create no new shows after “A Paris Love Story,” his Debussy tribute that premiered in California earlier this year. Felder intended to keep touring the repertoire he had already developed and not continue the years-long intensive process of researching, arranging and rehearsing entire new shows.
The big news this time now is that he has changed his mind.
“I kept getting calls from theaters. What I do serves a niche. Also, repetition is hard. Performing is not as fun for me as the creative process can be.”
So Felder is working on a Rachmaninoff show. He’s also reviving his “George Gershwin Alone,” which he had retired (and which he performed at Hartford Stage in 2004), for a limited run in Pittsfield, Mass., this August.
“I’m getting too old to do him” — George Gershwin died at the age of 38. Felder turns 51 in July, “and I’ve done it over 3,000 times.”
HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN, directed by Trevor Hay, runs June 21 to 30 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are June 21, 22, 28 and 29 at 8 p.m.; and June 25 to 27 at 7:30 p.m.; with 2 p.m. matinees on June 22, 23, 29 and 30. Tickets are $25 to $90. 860-527-5151, hartfordstage.org.
Felder then brings the show to Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Ct., Westport for 20 performances July 16 through Aug. 3; tickets to that engagement are $30 to $70; 203-227-4177,westportplayhouse.org.
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
