Flashback city.
Hershey Felder has been presenting his one-man show on Irving Berlin at the Cutler Majestic. Embodying the great composer-lyricist, Felder takes the audience through an extraordinary life from Berlin’s birth in Belarus to his death in New York at 101.
We get to hear much of the great music, including the backstory of songs we thought we knew. “White Christmas,” for example. We may have known it was written after Pearl Harbor and became beloved of US troops everywhere, but its heartfelt power comes from a loss Berlin and his wife Ellen experienced at Christmas years before.
I liked the way Felder/Berlin first describes the famous characters with whom he interacted and, after a pause, springs their names on us. He describes writing music for one performer whose first audition pegged him as balding and mediocre at acting, singing, dancing. It was Fred Astaire.
Felder does brief and funny imitations of many celebrities: Ethel Merman, George Kaufman, Flo Ziegfeld. There are movie clips featuring people like Al Jolson — and a touching story about the great African American singer Ethel Waters.
But what can catch a person by surprise is an incident or name that hasn’t been thought of in decades. The story about Berlin putting aside “God Bless America” because an adviser thought no one would like it — then pulling it out when a well-known singer wanted something for Armistice Day years later — gave me a jolt. That’s because the well-known singer was Kate Smith, and I had a flashback to a childhood nanny who listened every day to Kate Smith on the old black & white Dumont TV singing “When the moon comes over the mountain” (not a Berlin song).
After a standing ovation, Felder made an announcement that the eldest daughter of Irving Berlin was in the audience, and she came up to the front. And so did a daughter of hers and a son and two grandsons (grandchildren and great-children of the composer.)
Berlin’s daughter spoke a few words of gratitude to Felder for his faithful portrayal, noting in particular her father’s fierce patriotism. It was fun to think that this woman was the baby for whom Berlin wrote “Blue Skies Shining for Me.”
There’s a lot to be said for the out-of-body state induced by watching a good entertainment (or reading an absorbing mystery, or doing tai chi, or playing with a child) that puts your mental tape loop on pause and leaves you refreshed.
More about the production can be found at Arts Emerson.
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