Hershey Felder, who entranced Old Globe audiences last season with his portrayals of George Gershwin and Fréderic Chopin, is back with Beethoven, As I Knew Him, a musical portrait of that towering musical figure.

This show completes Felder’s “Composers Sonata.” In fact, it is the first of the trio, the whole being arranged like the movements of a musical sonata: the dramatic movement first, then the romantic one (Chopin), and finally the dance-like finale (Gershwin).

The world premiere of Beethoven, As I Knew Him is at the Old Globe Theatre through June 8, to be followed by short runs of the Gershwin and Chopin shows. All are directed by Joel Zwick, director of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time.

Beethoven, As I Knew Him is the only one of the three not narrated by the composer himself. Instead, we see the master through the eyes of 12-year-old Gerhard von Breuning, whose father Stephan was Beethoven’s lifelong friend. The adult Gerhard wrote the 1870 memoir on which Felder’s script is based.

The story begins when Gerhard, on a walk with his father, meets a “short, fat man having a conversation with himself” and is surprised when his father addresses this man who looks like a vagrant as Ludwig. “This surely must be another Ludwig,” the boy concludes.

But no, it is that Ludwig, and the boy would become close to the master in his last two years, assisting with correspondence, running errands, helping to keep his house in order and helping as he could during Beethoven’s last illness.

Felder, an accomplished pianist and a fine actor, has taken on a near-impossible juggling act here. Telling the story through a third party puts an inevitable emotional filter between us and Beethoven. The most riveting portions of the script are the few times when Felder does become the irascible, sometimes frightening composer, railing at Gerhard or deafness or life.

But it’s the music we want to hear and to hear about. Of the Fifth Symphony, Gerhard comments, “In those four notes, the universe” and asserts that the composer is “talking to us, telling us secrets only God knows, only Beethoven hears.”

When he hears of Mozart’s death, Beethoven consoles himself playing Mozart’s Requiem, noting that “one doesn’t even hear it – one feels it.”

The performed music speaks for itself – and for the master– and Felder is at his best when playing this sublime music. It’s unusual in this series for Felder to use taped portions, but here they serve to allow us to appreciate the composer’s amazing orchestrations.

Richard Norwood’s lighting design appropriately reveals and conceals parts of the simple set. Scenic designer Granois-Pierre Couture provides a black sketchbook backdrop on which somewhat distracting if evocative if blurry pen-and-ink projections appear and disappear.

“No one can explain why what he does moves us so much,” says Gerhard. The words of Beethoven, As I Knew Him don’t enlighten us much in this regard. But the music says it all.

Beethoven, As I Knew Him plays through June 8 at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call 619-23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

He made a living amusing and insulting people, and in 1972 was the second most requested speaker in the country, behind only Henry Kissinger. He retired with a Peabody, an Emmy, an honorary Academy Award and the designation of French Legion of Honor Commander of Arts and Letters.

Yep, it’s Groucho Marx, Mr. “Say the secret word and divide $100,” whose 56-year career encompassed vaudeville, three Broadway shows, 21 films and the 14-year total run for the radio and TV smash hit “You Bet Your Life.”

Now Groucho comes back to life at OnStage Playhouse, where Groucho: A Life in Revue plays through June 7. Bob Christiansen directs a first for the playhouse: a musical show with an onstage combo, consisting of Eddie Giese, Albert Hsieh and John Procter.

Charley Miller dons the moustache, does the chicken walk and sucks on the cigar in this rollicking but touching tribute to one of the funniest guys ever to grace the stage.

Julius Henry (later Groucho) was the third of five sons born to their intermittently unemployed tailor father. Julius’ dream was medical school, but he left school at 12 to work and help the family. Mother Minnie encouraged the boys in show business, making sure older brother Leonard (later Chico) got piano lessons and noting Julius’ pleasant singing voice and the fact that he could sing in tune. She organized the two plus Milton and Adolph (later Gummo and Harpo) and another boy singer into a vaudeville singing group, which toured with little success. One particularly disappointing night, the boys began cracking jokes onstage and found the audience much more receptive, and an entertainment juggernaut was born.

The road from vaudeville to the Broadway stage and Hollywood was difficult. It would have been rockier were it not for Chico, whose weakness for girls and appetite for gambling frequently found him rolling dice with influential people – and securing a job for the brothers in the process.

Groucho worked with and without his brothers to varying success until his particular talent – improvisation and the sardonic, often insulting ad lib – found its natural home in the radio and TV quiz show “You Bet Your Life.”

Miller gets a workout, performing vaudeville shtick, singing “Hello, I Must Be Going” from Animal Crackers and “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” from At the Circus, and waxing serious about his unsatisfactory personal life (three failed marriages), all the while aging from a kid to the 85-year-old Groucho doing a sum-up interview.

Christiansen has assembled a fine supporting cast for this trip down memory lane with the Marx Brothers. Michael Dean Grulli does a fine Chico (and plays a mean piano) and Jarrod Weintraub is good as Harpo. Rebecca Seubert (she of the angelic voice) plays Margaret Dumont (Groucho’s frequent female foil) and several other characters; Kelly Wood also does a fine job with multiple characters. Kudos to the band as well.

Groucho: A Life in Revue plays through June 7, at OnStage Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. For tickets call 619-422-7787 or visit onstageplayhouse.org.