It’s not easy for Hershey Felder to remember where he is some days, as he’s on the road more than 300 days a year. Remembering who he is also can be a challenge.
Today he may be Chopin, tomorrow George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein the day after that.
Where: O’Reilly Theater, Penn Ave., Downtown.
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday through Dec. 30. 7 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 2 and 7 p.m. Sat. and 2 p.m. Sun. (plus 7 p.m. Dec. 30).
Tickets: $25-$65 ($15.75 for students and 26 and younger); ppt.org or 412-316-1600.
It was Hershey Felder, actor, writer and pianist, on the phone last week, laughing about all the who’s and the where’s in a phone call from Seattle. He was in the midst of a stint channeling Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and getting ready to head to Pittsburgh Public Theater, where from Dec. 19-30 he will be “Putting on the Ritz” for his one-man show, “Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin.”
American’s Composer, as Berlin is known, gave “God Bless America” and “White Christmas” — the 1942 recording of the latter, by Bing Crosby, is the best-selling single, holiday or otherwise, of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Berlin wrote more than 1,500 songs, many of them hits, before Elvis Presley swung his hips, curled his lip and set off a new sound wave across the United States.
Mr. Felder introduces us to the Russian-born Berlin at nearly 100 years old — he died in 1989, at age 101 — on a night when carolers who had sung outside Berlin’s house for years were finally invited in and out of the cold. Through flashbacks, beginning in Czarist Russia, he tells the story of an immigrant who fell in love with the United States and penned some of the most patriotic tunes of all time, and a soundtrack for the likes of Fred Astaire (“Cheek to Cheek”) and Ethel Merman (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”).
Mr. Felder also channels Berlin’s wife of 60 years, Ellin; Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld; and Ethel Merman, the star of Berlin’s Broadway musical “Annie Get Your Gun.”
The Montreal native, 50, describes himself as a “theater kid” who began studying music over here when he was 16. He hadn’t intended this life of channeling other composers when he created his first show — an ode to 19th-century Polish composer Frederic Chopin.
“His was the story I wanted to tell; he was the person I felt closest to on the piano,” Mr. Felder said. “In the early days, the people I knew from theater and television said, ‘Nobody’s going to come. Nobody knows you and who’s Chop-in? Do somebody that people will recognize!’ ”
Gershwin was next, “and little did I know, it would become something audiences were actually interested in.”
He has been told he has created a genre of musical, biographical storytelling that is his alone. Audiences have followed the progression of shows because “they want to see all the characters,” he said. “They want to go on the journey — it’s kind of a Harry Potter of music.”
The characters he portrays, though, are all real people, and he relies in many cases on first-hand accounts to create his shows.
“I don’t try to put my own spin on things; I try to use their words and attitudes,” he said.
In the case of Irving Berlin, forged a friendship with the composer’s three daughters — “sadly, we just lost the youngest,” he said of Elizabeth, who died last year at age 80.
“The daughters confirmed for me something interesting,” Mr. Felder said. “There’s a sense that this is all a bit treacly, his patriotism, and they confirmed that this was very real, that he very much needed to be grateful for the freedoms that this country gave him, and he wasn’t shy about it and he wasn’t ashamed of it.
“And if anybody said it’s just cheesy or corny … he would say, ‘If this is what corny means, then I’m all about being corny.’ ”
Mr. Felder performed the show in Seattle, where he met Marya Sea Kaminski, now the head of Pittsburgh Public Theater. She asked him here for her first holiday season in Pittsburgh, and what will be his first visit as a performer.
He had thought about taking a break until he received “her kind invitation.” He has residences in New York and Europe, but home is where his beloved standard poodle is, so he agreed to spend the last days of 2018 in Pittsburgh, as Irving Berlin.
This particular show, he said, “has been referred to as a history of America in song, because it’s 60 years of American history, He composes according to what’s going on around him, and captures the essence of the people and the country.”
Today, “God Bless America” is a standard seventh-inning stretch song and “is more of a folk song, as if no one wrote it and it just was always there.” Mr. Felder will clear up that notion for a two weeks while -— snow or not — bringing a “White Christmas” to the Pittsburgh Cultural District.
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.
First Published: December 17, 2018, 2:21 p.m.
