The power of music, time and history is the underlying theme of Hershey Felder's latest one-man show, Abe Lincoln’s Piano,which is now packing them in at the Geffen Playhouse. Felder, whose previous solo shows dealt with the lives of such personalities as Leonard Bernstein, Franz Liszt and George Gershwin, has turned inward this time around. The story he tells, whether on his feet or seated behind a Steinway piano (which becomes a character in the story), is a personal one. Felder grew up in Montreal and took his love of music from his mother, whose early death was a character-shaping event in his life. Even today he strives to live up to the standards she set for him -- and to honor the music she played at home.
Felder left Canada in his teens and set out to make it as a pianist in the USA, a country he admired above all others. After years of struggle and misadventure, he was booked to play a concert at the Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC -- the very theater where one of his boyhood heroes, President Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated in 1865. Felder brings to life that tragic event largely through the words of the Union Army surgeon who tried valiantly to save Lincoln's life that night. (The words come from the surgeon's little-known diary).
Felder also discovered a small museum near the Ford’s Theater that contained Lincoln memorabilia, including a Steinway piano which had once belonged to the late president's family. And from a dignified African-American museum guard, he learned that Lincoln himself used to pick out some favorite tunes on the instrument, including "Beautiful Dreamer," by Stephen Foster. This was a tune Felder had first heard sung by his mother; thus memory, love, and the pain of death (his mother's and Lincoln's) flooded through him and had an everlasting impact on him.
Felder, aided by projection design plus the music of Stephen Foster and the army surgeon's words (not to speak of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), delivers a deeply felt and richly nuanced performance which holds the audience spellbound from beginning to end.
