”Ye cannot serve God and Mammon” said the bible. Mitch Feinstein tried to do both, as he confesses in his one-man show, For Love or Money, now running at the 2021 Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Feinstein grew up in Baltimore, the child of a relatively poor family (his father was a shoe salesman). He was by nature bright and bookish, drawn to literature and the theater. But his overbearing mother pushed him to follow in the footsteps of her brother, a rich Beverly Hills lawyer. So for a long time he swallowed his creative instincts and devoted his life to the pursuit of money. He became a lawyer, then a mortgage broker, making big bucks in the 2000 real estate boom. So driven was he, so desperate to become as rich as Uncle Ben, that he neglected his family and alienated his wife and children.
”I had become addicted to—and co-dependent—on money,” he confesses during the course of his monologue. Like all addictions, he found it hard to give it up, even though he was haunted by his artistic dreams and made to feel guilty by his neglect of them.
It wasn’t until the real estate bubble burst in 2008--and he lost most of his money -- that he found the strength and will to kick his addiction. He gave up being a mortgage broker (and a lawyer), took acting and writing classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute, where he has performed in such plays as King Lear, Hamlet, Neil Simon’s comedy Rumors., and now, For Love or Money, which he has created with the help of director Jessica Lynn Johnson and brought to the Fringe.
It takes courage to bear one’s soul in a public arena, but Feinstein is up to the challenge. Working solo with just a few video images to enliven things, he delves deep into the circumstances of his life, depicting them with honesty and humility. Although he regrets wasting all those years in pursuit of Mammon, he is still happy and proud to be where he is today, acting in his own show at the Fringe. As he says, For Love or Money is a solo show about gratitude.”
