New show in Highgate celebrates music of Leonard Bernstein and Joni Mitchell

Deb Filler was only eight when she realised she could entertain people through mimicry. “My grandma was very teutonic and when she talked to my mother, quite often she would bark at her,” Filler explains, emphasising ‘teutonic’ in a German accent. “She had come over for dinner, and my job had been to get everyone’s coats afterwards. [In order] to deflect the energy between her and mum, I put on my grandma’s coat and became her. Everybody cracked up.” 

Filler’s mother, who wrote shows for every family party, took that moment to tell Filler she wanted her to play her grandmother for her forthcoming 70th birthday celebration. “It brought the house down,” she says, and remembers thinking then that she “had something”.

The Toronto-based, New Zealand-born writer, musician, actor and comedian has spent decades touring across America, Canada, Australia and Europe. Her solo shows include Punch Me in the Stomach, a tragicomic character portrait of 36 members of her extended family, many of whom were murdered by the Nazis, and Filler Up! about food and family, during which she baked her father’s chollah recipe – he was a baker – live on stage.

Filler’s latest one-woman show, Cohen, Bernstein, Joni and Me opens in London this week.

“Dare I say that this particular show is my opus,” Filler, 71, says, speaking over Zoom from her Toronto home. Written and performed by Filler and directed by Mitchell Cushman, Cohen, Bernstein, Joni and Me is about young Deb’s quest to find her own kind of music. “She doesn’t want to be moulded by her family’s musical expectations. She wants folk music.” Peppered with stories of serendipitous meetings with some of the greatest musical artists of our time, it is also a story of love, happiness, seeking stardom and finding acceptance.

Filler had brought an earlier version of the show to JW3 in 2015 for a Jewish Comedy Festival. “At that point, what I had was a bunch of very good stories.” Some of these stories have found their way into Cohen, Bernstein, Joni and Me. One is meeting Leonard Bernstein, aged 19, at the Auckland Town Hall, where he played a rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the New York Philharmonic just for her. “[After his performance,] Bernstein said it was a mechaya (pleasure) to play to such a beautiful young lady and blew me a kiss. I’ve kept it in here,” she says, pointing to her heart, “and held onto it ever since.”

Filler is the consummate performer. Enthusiastic, talkative and a little restless, our conversation is part interview, part act. She grew up in Mount Roskill, an Auckland suburb, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor father and a German refugee mother. There were several entertainers within the family: Filler’s maternal grandmother was an opera singer, and both her grandfather and father were storytellers. And then there were her mother’s shows. “No matter who had a birthday, my mother wrote for my sister and me to perform,” Filler says, before breaking out into a song about matzah balls to the tune of Edelweiss. “So yeah, I got a genetic dump,” she adds, with a laugh.

But it was not all rosy. Filler recalls very few Jews in Mount Roskill. “It was a bit isolating… a little like being an outsider. Well, quite a lot actually. My father was an unusual man in Mount Roskill as he had a very thick Jewish accent. He was charismatic but there was a lot of rage.” Although Filler’s father spoke about his experiences during the Holocaust, he was prone to dark moods, and she would use humour to lift him out of them. The essence of her comedy is, she says, a Jewish ability to be able to find light and levity in the darkest of moments.

At home, there was a profound sense of loss for those family members who were missing or dead. “But Dad did tell a lot of stories, and I think that propelled me out of that house. My parents expected me to get married to a Jewish guy and carry on the tradition of being very community minded, but I had been bitten by the bug.”

Filler studied teaching training at Auckland College of Education, specialising in drama before leaving New Zealand for North America. In Vancouver, she found a way to meet her idol, Joni Mitchell, determined to become her backup singer. “It didn’t happen.” She went onto New York to study acting, which is where she met Leonard Cohen; a friendship endured until his death in 2016.

Living in 1980s New York as a student was tough and Filler took whatever jobs she could to make ends meet, one of which was working as a minicab driver. “I was told to pick up a Mr Cohen from Columbia Records and take him to the airport. And when he got into the car, I had no idea who he was.” But it was a great car ride, she says, so much so that he remembered it many years later when Filler contacted him to ask for the rights to one of his songs for the film version of Punch Me in the Stomach.

Much of Filler’s work draws on characters from her family. Were there ever any objections to her portrayal of them? “No. Quite the opposite,” she replies. “I think it made them feel better about themselves because I was telling their story in a way that they objectively couldn’t.” But, as well as playing for laughs, is there catharsis in sharing their experiences? “That’s a good question. There must be or I wouldn’t keep doing it. I believe these stories need to be passed on.”

Filler’s father’s experiences affected her attitude and drive. “I was so influenced by my father’s survival that I’ll do whatever it takes,” she says. “I was a very resourceful young woman, and I found my way through situations. But even today, I don’t think about what the consequences might be, I just go for it.” That said, Filler has experienced cultural cancellation from theatres, most recently in Dublin. The reason given was that her show was not suitable for their audiences. Her response is upbeat.

“It gives you pause for thought, then let’s go and find another theatre and show them how popular this show is,” she says. “Let’s triumph because that’s what we must do as Jews. We must keep showing the humour and that resilience is our backbone. So I’m not going to be knocked down by some theatre in Dublin.”

Cohen, Bernstein, Joni and Me runs at Upstairs at The Gatehouse, Highgate, until 1 February. upstairsatthegatehouse.com

Click here to read our review of this show