Theatre in Review: Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin (59E59)

	Hershey Felder. Photo: Hershey Felder Presents

An American icon is discovered in splendid isolation in Hershey Felder's latest exercise in musical history. (For those of you coming in late, Felder -- an actor, pianist, and composer -- has pioneered his own genre of solo biographical shows focusing on musical luminaries, including George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, and others.) Irving Berlin, to this day the most popular American songwriter, spent the last decades of his life entombed in his Beekman Place home, having resolutely turned his face away from the world. As the lights come up, we are told that he is a bitter centenarian, refusing to acknowledge the cadre of faithful fans who, each year at holiday time, assemble outside his window to serenade him with his most popular song, "White Christmas." We don't see the ancient Berlin until the final moments; before that, the story of his life is commandeered by the songwriter at his midlife peak, bursting with talent and energy. It's a canny strategy, presenting a double vision of the man in his heyday, while nevertheless warning us where his story is headed: Berlin led a life that, for all its triumphs, was marked by bizarre and often random ill fortune. His story is, oddly, like his songs -- loaded with an irresistible drive yet sometimes flecked with melancholy minor chords.

As narrated by Felder, who wears the role of Berlin like one of the custom-tailored Savile Row suits favored by the songwriter, it's a classic American tale. Born Israel Beilin in Belarus, he came to this country in 1893 (he was five) with his family after their town was burned to the ground in a pogrom. In New York, those gold-paved streets of legend proved remarkably elusive: The family of eight -- plus a boarder -- lived in three rooms. Berlin's father, a cantor by profession in a city oversupplied with them, struggled to find work, ending up an inspector of kosher slaughterhouses; a few years later, he died, still a young man. Thinking of himself as "a tax on the family," Berlin, barely a teenager, abandons school and takes to the streets, working a variety of jobs that range from newsboy to singing waiter to -- eventually -- songwriter. A one-man hit factory, he grinds out one "ragtime" number after another -- although, as he wryly notes, the term is a misnomer for the peppy novelty numbers that constitute his early output.

From the beginning, one thing is certain: This gifted young man has an unfailing ability to catch the mood and tempo of life in his adopted country. Catering to a dance-crazy public, he makes his name with toe-tappers like "Alexander's Ragtime Band" -- arguably the twentieth century's greatest earworm -- then embraces the US presence in World War I with a hit military revue, "Yip Yip Yaphank" (book, music, and lyrics by "Sgt. Irving Berlin"), featuring him singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." Following a stint as in-house songwriter to American-girl-glorifier Florenz Ziegfeld, Berlin glorifies his bank account with the Music Box Revues, staged in the eponymous theatre, which he happens to own. He pens hit after Broadway hit, adding innumerable leaves to the American songbook. When Hollywood beckons, he comes calling; if his first sojourn on the soundstages is disappointing -- the vogue for all-singing, all-dancing musicals doesn't last, halted by technical challenges -- he eventually becomes a filmland fixture. By the time he writes the score for Holiday Inn (1942), he is a social institution. A chief adornment of Holiday Inn is "White Christmas," which, he notes, is less about the Yuletide season and more an expression of the longing felt by American servicemen deployed in far-flung locations in World War II. With such a grasp of their fears and dreams, it's little wonder that he so thoroughly won the hearts of his countrymen. At this fraught political moment, it is surely not lost on Felder and company that this is an exemplary immigration narrative.

Even after the war, nearing sixty, more accolades awaited Berlin, including two of his most successful musicals -- Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madame -- both starring that "steamship foghorn" Ethel Merman. With her clarion belt and cut-glass diction, she was the ideal articulator of his songs; the only wonder is that it took them so long to get together. With these breezily amusing shows, Berlin -- still swimming in the mainstream -- caught the ebullient, anything-goes exuberance of the country at its postwar peak.

But this triumphal march has a darker, sadder countermelody, the elements of which include the freak-accident deaths of Berlin's first wife, Dorothy Goetz, and, later, one of his children. His second wife, Ellin Mackay, is a hard-won prize, obtained against the implacable opposition of her father, a financier and heir to a massive silver fortune, who is horrified at the prospect of a Jewish tunesmith for a son-in-law. Berlin and Ellin elope, and Mackay promptly disowns his daughter -- and it takes a terrible reversal of fortune to reunite them.

And no one -- not even the world's most beloved songwriter -- can stop the march of time. If the Merman shows are hits, others, including Miss Liberty -- a leaden piece of folderol about the search for the model for the Statue of Liberty -- and Mr. President -- a lightweight domestic comedy about a First Family -- disappoint. (Felder's script is in error here: He has Berlin say that Mr. President is about the Kennedys, which it is not; the opening number makes that point in so many words.) Felder's Berlin blames himself for lading his shows with patriotic ballads even as they go out of fashion, a comment that is true only as far as it goes, begging the question of these shows' extremely weak books. Mr. President, written in 1962, hardly sounds like the work of an old man.

Still, Felder has the big picture and it is a lively, crowded canvas, filled with laughter and real feeling. Berlin was hardly the only show business figure undone by rapid and fundamental social change, but, as the voice of the American consensus, he was the most deeply affected by it. As the fifties neared their end, his world was breaking up: Rock and roll was waiting in the wings. (His reaction -- indicative of physical distress -- to Elvis Presley's cover of "White Christmas" is priceless.) On Broadway, the merriment of Annie Get Your Gun gave way to the angst of Follies. The social fabric was increasingly torn by issues of war, race, and generational conflict, and Berlin, the quintessential American -- who returned his good fortune with philanthropy and the staunch defense of civil rights -- found himself a stranger in a strange land. Mr. President concludes with an anthem titled "This is a Great Country," a sentiment that didn't find as many takers as it might have twenty years earlier.

Although fans of show business history will be familiar with many of the anecdotes on offer -- among them, the famous account of Fred Astaire's underwhelming screen test at MGM -- Felder's Rolex timing is sufficient to make them freshly amusing. His musicianship is impeccable on everything he touches, ranging from such frothy items as "My Wife's Gone to the Country (Hurrah)" to haunting ballads, such as "Always," "Blue Skies," and "Suppertime," a wrenching number about the lynching of a black man that made a star of Ethel Waters. (Wait for the scathing account of the racist behavior of Waters' co-stars in that show, As Thousands Cheer.) Especially memorable is his haunting rendition of "What'll I Do?" If there's a song with a more pronounced aching heart, I have yet to hear it.

The production features a set, by Felder, depicting Berlin's living room at Christmastime, complete with a towering tree and twinkle lights. The projection designer, Brian McMullen, provides many evocative images, including Berlin's parents and wives, footage from some of his films, scenes of wartime, and more. Erik Carstensen's sound design is delicately rendered, and includes such effects as breaking glass, radio broadcasts, cantorial music, and others. Richard Norwood's lighting includes, to my mind, some rather odd combinations of saturated color, but he may have been following the wishes of the director, Trevor Hay, who presides over a very smooth production. (Felder doesn't use a costume designer, which is fair enough, but he really should consult a hair designer; here, as in the Bernstein show, he sports an obviously false wig.)

Of the performances by Felder that I've seen, this is surely the strongest; he seems to have bonded more fully with Berlin than his other subjects, and he conveys the man's deep attachment to his loved ones and country, along with his bewilderment over changing times. (As someone suffering from a profound allergy to audience singalongs, I could have done without these occasional moments, but there's little doubt that the audience at my performance was willing to chime in.) Berlin's songs are a permanent pleasure to the ear, and at least for a couple of hours at 59E59, his ability to speak to the culture that nurtured him is restored. -- David Barbour