Hershey Felder resurrects composer Irving Berlin
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