We’ve seen and loved many Hershey Felder shows. The Canadian pianist/performer/playwright is usually portraying a well-known composer, a lá Beethoven or Debussy or Irving Berlin, in which he plays their music on piano while simultaneously acting out their life stories. Felder is able to play the most complex piano music while talking at the same time, a gift not available to the rest of us humans.
But this time, in his 2026 World Premiere “The Piano and Me,” playing only until Feb. 8 at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, Felder’s subject is none other than himself. His life story is touchingly detailed with set pieces about his immigrant grandparents from Hungary and Poland, which includes the music of all the composers who influenced the young Hershey, such as Beethoven and Mozart and Bach, as well as the favorite composers of his grandparents from their homelands (Bartók from Hungary, Chopin from Poland). We also get the fascinating story about how the young Hershey got his start in Hollywood.
Admittedly, this show has special resonance for this reviewer, whose youth was spent hearing similar immigrant stories from his own grandparents, and learning to love the same music played by his mother on the piano in their living room. We can’t give a show a higher review. It is at once quite long and not long enough.
At the end, as is his custom, Felder stands on stage and fields random questions from the audience. One of the set pieces in “The Piano and Me” features a suitcase that his Hungarian grandparents kept by their front door, never opened, but never moved. The reason was “In case they come for us again.”
A lady in the audience shouted out: “Hershey, do you have your own suitcase packed by your front door?” This led to his honest reflections about the horrors he sees overtaking the world today. And then he sat down at the piano and played Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” to a hushed audience. And I cried. And that was that. Lights up.
RATINGS ★★★★★
The San Francisco Theater Blog gives its highest award possible to Hershey Felder’s “The Piano and Me:” FIVE STARS. We urge you to see this show, to understand the possibilities of live performance and music together, and how they can reach into your heart and tug at it until it hurts.
Hershey Felder’s “The Piano and Me”
Mountain View Center for Performing Arts
500 Castro Street, Mountain View
Through Feb 8, 2026
$34-$115
