Rachmaninoff and the Tsar runs 1 hour and 40 minutes, with no intermission.

Late seating and re-entry are at the discretion of house management and are not guaranteed.

The use of cameras, video recorders, audio recorders and/or any other type of recording device during a performance is strictly prohibited.

About the Play

• Hershey Felder previously performed at Writers Theatre in the spring of 2024 with his production of Monsieur Chopin – A Play with Music.
  
  
• Since the 1998 premiere of his internationally lauded play with music George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder has appeared on world renowned stages throughout the United States and abroad giving more than six thousand performances on stages in original works that include Beethoven, Maestro Bernstein, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, as well as the appearances of Our Great Tchaikovsky, A Paris Love Story - Debussy, and more.  
• This exploration of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s itinerant but extraordinary life illuminates the master’s sense of home and family and how those elements influenced his art. Featuring his world famous Prelude in C-sharp minor to his Piano Concert No. 2, his symphonies and his Paganini Variations, Rachmaninoff did leave Russia but Russia stayed with him until the very end influencing every aspect of his life.
  
  
• Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar had its world premiere at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica followed by the Balboa Theatre in Santa Monica where the San Diego Union Tribune said that “Felder gives a heartbreaking performance in his masterful drama about Rachmaninoff in what is his best work.” The Writers Theatre engagement is part of the production’s World Premiere season.