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PIECE OF MY HEART Send This Review to a Friend
The music is paramount in “Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story,” a Merged Work Productions presentation aiming to boost the reputation of pop-rock composer Bert Berns, whose songs are remembered better than the man who composed them. Berns died at the age of 38 in 1967 after growing up with heart problems. The new jukebox musical is a lively collection from his voluminous numbers held together by a story involving the daughter who never got to know her father, and wants to gain control of his music to preserve it, fighting her mother, who wants to sell the rights that would kill his legacy, mixed with a portrait of Berns. As often happens in all kinds of musicals, the book by Daniel Goldfarb has its awkward moments, but the music, for those with a taste for songs of the Berns variety, the good acting and the lively staging by director and choreographer Denis Jones overshadow such problems.
Many will recognize such numbers as “Twist and Shout,” “Cry to Me,” “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” “I’ll be a Liar” and others brought freshly to life. The story on which the m6usical trajectory is built, involves Berns’s 30-year-old daughter, Jessie (Leslie Kritzer), coming to New York against the wishes of her bitter mother, Ilene (Linda Hart), in response to an urgent appeal by her father’s old colleague Wazzel (Joseph Siravo), who knows about Ilene’s plans. The plot flips between that point and back in time to when Berns came into his prime, sometimes with the principals on stage watching what unfolds in the past.
The key to the musical’s impact is the all-around terrific singing. Zak Resnick as Berns is magnetic interpreting the composer’s songs and the passionate love for his work and desire to be remembered. Kritzer as Jessie is very appealing when she sings, and Teal Wicks as the beautiful young Ilene with whom Berns falls in love and marries after she gets pregnant also sings strongly. Hart as the older Ilene makes a torrid impression when she has her biggest moment in the spotlight. Other impressive singing is done by Derrick Baskin as Berns’s buddy and intended recording star who is shunted aside in the dog-eat-dog music business, and by de’Adre Aziza as a sexy woman with whom Berns has an early fling.
One element that bothered me some was the huge difference between depictions of the charm and love expressed by the attractive young Ilene toward Berns and the mean-spirited, bitchy dishonesty that the older widowed Ilene expressed toward her daughter. They hardly seemed like the same women.
An excellent job was done weaving the songs appropriately into the right plot turns. Also, compliments go to the versatile ensemble, to costume designer David C. Woolard and to the excellent orchestra doing justice to the score, with compelling arrangements by Garry Sherman.
Some of the others of the 26 songs performed include the title number “Piece of My Heart,” “Are You Lonely for Me Baby,” “Here Comes the Night,” “I’m Gonna Run Away from You,” and “Tell Him.” At the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street. Phone: 212-279-4200. Reviewed July 14, 2014.
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