Theatre in Review: Maestro (59E59)

	Hershey Felder. Photo: Courtesy of Hershey Felder Persents

One of the twentieth century's most fascinating, and polarizing, personalities comes to life in all his maddening contradictions in Maestro. That would be Leonard Bernstein, conductor, composer, and all-around celebrity -- Lenny to his friends and also to the high-culture mandarins who patronized him for his outsized ambitions, florid conducting style, embrace of pop music, and endorsement of left-wing causes. In many ways, his is a life with the structure of classical tragedy: early success, worldwide fame, and an apparently happy family life -- all brought down by the fissures in his psyche.

In this solo piece, the actor/musician Hershey Felder is Bernstein, ostensibly giving one of his televised musical lectures but really laying bare the story of his rise and fall. Born into a bourgeois Massachusetts family, his early fascination with music earned the disapproval of his father, Sam, a beauty products distributor and Talmud devotee. Maestro probably plays the father-son divide too much for comedy, with Felder relying too heavily on Sam's oy-vey-iz-mir gestures, but the script makes a strong case that Sam's withholding nature ignited Bernstein's determination to conquer the cultural world.

We also see Bernstein tangling with a series of mentors, each of whom helped to shape his career. Perhaps the most important of them was the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, who, in addition to deepening Bernstein's musical education, of whom he says, " I felt connected to this man who only shared his life with men in a way I never thought imaginable and it was very powerful." Finally, he landed the position of assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, and, in true Ruby Keeler fashion, replaced the ailing Artur Rodzinski at the conductor's podium at the last minute - and a star was born. Not long after, he composed On the Town, a smash hit musical. He was 26 years old.

And yet, as Maestro makes clear, such staggering achievements were not enough by half for this demanding young man. Bernstein says, "But you know what? No one gives a goddamn about conductors. The only ones they care about are composers." (That he felt this way at a time when the American musical landscape was filled with superstar maestros like Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, and George Szell tells you something about his determination to make his own place in history.) So he turned to composition -- prolifically, of course -- turning out a variety of symphonies and other works. Felder easily conveys Bernstein's long-running bitterness that the entirety of his "serious" output couldn't begin to approach the popularity of even a single song from West Side Story. The fact that he composed four of the greatest Broadway scores ever was apparently a source of cold comfort. (Musical theatre fans, take note: There is no discussion of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the colossal musical disaster, written in collaboration with Alan Jay Lerner, that closed out his Broadway career -- a misadventure that would probably fill a play by itself)

Maestro doesn't delve deeply into Bernstein's marriage to Felicia Montealegre, but what we learn is central to the drama of his existence. On hearing of their engagement, his sister Shirley quietly asks, "But Lenny, what about the other part of your life?" -- a question that, significantly, remains unanswered. His own, faintly chilling, explanation for the marriage is, "I needed the organization, the logical outcome." In other words, he had to show the world he could be a "normal" husband and father. For a time, this plan worked and he was apparently deeply happy playing the role of husband and father. But it was probably impossible that he wouldn't finally break free -- and, in the early 1970s, he walked out on his family to live with another man, a betrayal that left Montealegre devastated and humiliated. There was an attempt at a reconciliation, but by then she was ill with cancer. Maestro suggests, probably correctly, that her death was the beginning of the end for Bernstein as well. After her, his life became a kind of orgy of consumption -- more gigs, more compositions, more men -- all this the frantic activity undermining his stature and turning him into a critics' punching bag.

It was an impossibly crowded life, and a solo show such as Maestro can't really do it full justice -- such famous friends as Comden, Green, and Sondheim barely get a mention, although Jerry Robbins gets a thorough raking-over. Still, Maestro sketches in a plausible and touching portrait of a giant undone by the sheer abundance of his gifts. Felder manages a fair imitation of Bernstein's rather grand vocal manner, but he can't suggest the craggily handsome, larger-than-life figure we see in the archival footage shown before the show begins. He is also burdened with a wig so terrible that only my professional code of conduct stopped me from walking onstage and snatching it off his head. Nevertheless, his performance, under the direction of Joel Zwick, gets at the torment of an artist chasing too many muses, wearing his soul out in the process. A fine pianist, Felder adds resonance to the proceedings by playing various excerpts from the work of Bernstein and other classical composers. (A catty comment about Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is especially ironic, given how his own serious works were dismissed by some as the products of a dilettante.)

The rest of the production is fairly assured. François-Pierre Couture's set places a grand piano in a setting suggestive of a television studio, backed by what looks like a large piece of distressed muslin, which serves as a surface for Christopher Ash's compelling projections of Bernstein's family, various conductors and composers, and other relevant images. Ash also provided the lighting, which helps to establish an intimate atmosphere for this confessional evening. The sound designer, Erik Carstensen, supplies a playlist of excerpts from various classical works.

If Maestro largely amounts to a brisk guided tour of Bernstein's life, it powerfully suggests the intoxicating effect of music on on a complex character torn between creative and self-destructive impulses; as such it is far more dramatic than so many solo biographical plays, I'm betting that anyone with a nodding acquaintance with Bernstein will fall under its spell. -- David Barbour