People’s Light presents Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar

A gifted pianist in his own right, Felder has crafted a cottage industry of biographical dramas investigating the great figures of classical music history. In a way, Rachmaninoff—a star soloist and impresario as well as a composer—makes a certain sense to be embodied by this particular artist. But Felder avoids the paint-by-numbers trappings associated with the genre, offering instead a compelling portrait and a juicy slice of fabulist revisionism over the course of 90 minutes.

The composer and the prince

We meet Rachmaninoff in the ornate garden of a Beverly Hills mansion, in the days before his 1943 death. (Felder is credited as the production designer, with projections by Stefano Decarli.) Drifting toward the afterlife, he summons the ultimate avatar of his forsaken homeland to keep him company: Tsar Nicholas II (Jonathan Silvestri, outfitted with pomp and circumstance by costumer Marysol M. Gabriel).

The composer and the prince bicker and banter deliciously, punctuated by intervals where Felder takes to the Steinway and offers selections from Rachmaninoff’s catalog. An arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” proves wonderfully ironic, its patriotism couched in a minor-key melancholy. And Felder performs the famous 18th Variation from Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the depth you’d expect from any great concert soloist.

A brush with Anastasia

The inspiration that led Rachmaninoff to write that beloved work after a particularly fallow period forms the meat of Felder’s play. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll say there’s historical evidence that Rachmaninoff aided Anna Anderson—the woman who claimed falsely to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia—when she came to America in the 1920s.

Whether or not Rachmaninoff actually believed Anderson is almost immaterial. Felder understands the composer was swayed by what she represented: a flickering ember of a lost world. As presented here, the conviction is moving in its pathos, and there’s genuine poignancy in watching the spirit of the Tsar hope that his beloved youngest daughter might still be alive. (Under Trevor Hay’s direction, Silvestri proves a great theatrical listener.)

Awash in sadness and joy

Rachmaninoff and the Tsar doesn’t entirely avoid the trappings of occasional homey dialogue or wink-and-nod biography. (I guffawed a bit when the composer described himself as “85 percent music and 15 percent man.”) Still, it makes a compelling entry in Felder’s growing repertoire, and it offers a portrait of exile awash in sadness and joy. As with Rachmaninoff’s music, there is much truth and beauty side by side.

There will be a talkback immediately following every performance of Rachmaninoff and the Tsar featuring Hershey Felder and Jonathan Silvestri.

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