Alexandra Silber reflects on loss

MEMOIR

You might say musical theater star Alexandra Silber began writing because of divine intervention. As she recounts in her second book, the memoir “White Hot Grief Parade,” it all starts when a rabbi insists that she give the eulogy at her father’s funeral.

So at 18 she finds herself typing her heart out on a teal Apple laptop while her best friends from her performing arts boarding school make a Kinko’s run to print funeral programs.

The next day she delivers a 14-page speech propped up on a Torah, “for strength,” as Rabbi Syme says, and just like that, a writer with tremendous stage presence is born.

Less than four years later, Silber will make her West End debut singing Andrew Lloyd Webber, but “White Hot Grief Parade” is more about family dynamics and her father’s death than the road to her now-successful career.

Silber has written a rare showbiz memoir that holds more value for the writing than the celebrity namedropping or rags-to-black tie trajectory. “Wicked” star Kristin Chenoweth’s memoir, for example, is fun for its dishy glimpses behind the scenes and real-life Aaron Sorkin dialogue. More recently, dancer David Hallberg recounted his path from bullied South Dakota kid to star of the Bolshoi and American Theatre ballets. Both books tell compelling stories that aren’t exactly relatable.

The theme of experiencing of loss and finding solace through memory, art and friendship, however, should allow Silber’s memoir to resonate with a larger audience.

Silber is born in California, but grows up mostly in Michigan, where her lawyer father returns to join the family business despite his hostile parents, who resent him for marrying outside the Jewish faith. Once, his mother Edna picks up 8-year-old “Al” for an all-day outing, but instead drops the girl off alone at the home of a friend who needs help cleaning. Silber’s grandmother instructs her not to tell; three days later the traumatized girl bawls to her parents.

“Secrets are important to honor,” Michael Silber tells his daughter. “But not when you are afraid or feel in danger. There is a sacredness in honesty.”

That mantra permeates Silber’s witty and wise book about her loving (immediate) family, and the way her parents inspire her affection for musical theater. There is always a Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook on the coffee table and impromptu games of musical theater “Jeopardy.” The highlight of Silber’s young life is a trip to see “Ragtime” in New York, after which she stands in line to meet Tony-winner Judy Kaye, who predicts the 14-yearold will end up on Broadway someday.

After a rough freshman year at her local high school, Silber’s parents send her to Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she meets an aspiring oboist and a set designer who, along with her boyfriend and onstage co-star, become the three principal guides helping Silber and her mother through their grief. Michael Silber’s funeral is run by four teenagers with “banana-sized cell phones,” Silber writes. At times, the teens are quite literally characters, since Silber formats about a dozen chapters as plays. Highlights include the kvetching of Mrs. Whoever-witz and Mrs. Something-baum at the funeral reception, as well as a scene where the no-nonsense oboist challenges the graveyard shift Kinko’s employee to make decent copies of funeral programs.

There are times when the nonlinear narrative feels random and self-indulgent, including a crossword and a maze. And late in the book, a few chapters gloss over profoundly disturbing situations, and hint that Silber will have a very difficult time furthering her career in theater without her father sitting in the audience.

Perhaps she intends to expand those chapters into future books. For this memoir, her focus is on her father’s death in 2001 and what she calls “the democracy of loss.” She reflects on this concept most eloquently in a flashforward to 2013, when Silber makes her Carnegie Hall debut singing onstage with her former idol, Kaye, who has just lost her own father.

“You know that feeling? When an artist’s music, writing, teachings, leadership or public advocacy is so vital to your individual narrative that you feel as though you not only owe them an open letter and a thank you fruit basket, but in a strange way you feel as though you actually know them, when in fact you do not. They have palpably touched your life.”

That’s how Silber recalls feeling about Kaye after they perform together. Readers may feel a similar appreciation for Silber after “White Hot Grief Parade.”