Fiddler on the Roof by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick & Joseph Stein. National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in New York City.
I regret that I waited so long before seeing this wonderful staging of Fiddler on the Roof. It’s the first production in America in Yiddish, the language spoken in the shtetl and the language of the Sholem Aleichem stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof.
The National Yiddish Folksbiene Theater production opened at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in 2018 and moved uptown to the 499-seat Stage 42. I delayed attending because I couldn’t imagine how this version could equal the many fine productions of Fiddler I’d previously seen.
It actually is an excellent rendition, with one of the best Tevyes I’ve ever seen. The scenery is sparse, but it’s quite theatrical. The bottle dance in the wedding scene has as much suspense and excitement as a Broadway staging.
Even for those of us who do not understand the language, this is an illuminating experience. It communicates because everything in the production seems more authentic than ever before. This fact doesn’t take anything away from the 1963 original. The intent then, understandably, was to reach a wide audience.
At that time the public knew very little about Eastern European Jewish culture. American Jews, for the most part, rejected that way of life as foreign. Orthodox religious practices were shunned as “old world.”
Therefore it made sense to speak and sing about generalized Tradition and not about Torah, which is the scroll of religious laws. (“Tradition” implies a set of guidelines; “Torah” is specific law and order, which Tevye felt he must obey.) The team wanted to universalize the story for audiences of all backgrounds, so they minimized the Jewish content. Another example: To explain things to non-observers, when Tevye referred to the tzitzis on his tallis he described them as “these little fringes.”
This approach was so effective that worldwide audience felt that Fiddler on the Roof was about their own culture. When I attended the original, two nuns seated next to me whispered “How true!”
The new production has the word Torah prominently displayed in Hebrew/Yiddish letters. (The two languages sound different from each other but use the same visual alphabet.) The word appears to be on parchment, which conveys a surface fragility; it can easily be torn and damaged, and one of the Cossacks tears it down during Motl and Tsaytl’s wedding.
What we hear is the Yiddish adaptation written in 1965 by Shraga Friedman for a production in Israel. “If I Were a Rich Man” becomes “Ven Ikh Bin a Rotshild.” That lyric cleverly refers to a separate short story by Aleichem about the wealthy Rothschilds.
Although hardly anyone speaks Yiddish anymore, many of the words are familiar to Americans, such as meshugge (crazy), zay gezunt (be well), verklempt (overcome with emotion), tsimmes (big fuss). These words bring smiles to our faces. Then, when the leather-booted Cossacks speak in the Russian language the contrast is shocking.
One element that’s still difficult for modern folks to understand is Tevye’s reaction to the wedding of his third daughter to a Russian Orthodox Catholic. Instead of bending, as has done towards his elder daughter’s choices, Tevye banishes Khave from the family, declaring her dead. He says, “Let’s sit shiva for her as God commanded,” which is not in the Broadway script, and he starts to recite the mourner’s prayer. My 25-year-old son couldn’t comprehend this. But it was the common reaction of Jews in the time when Fiddler is set. After all, Jews were a persecuted minority and they wanted their descendants to remain Jewish.
It actually happened in real life. Jan Peerce, the famous tenor who played Tevye on Broadway during part of the original run, reacted just as Tevye did when his son Larry married a gentile in the 1950s. He told me directly, “I was ready to die. I had such severe pains in my stomach that I’d have to lie down on the floor of my dressing room at the Met Opera.” Jan wouldn’t talk to Larry for almost five years.
The heartwarming Tevye is Texas-reared Steven Skybell. Jackie Hoffman is a strong Yente and Jennifer Babiak is Golde. Lisa Fishman is Tsaytl whom Tevye wants to marry off to older butcher Leyzer-Volf (Bruce Sabath) while she desires the timid tailor Motl, played sweetly by Ben Liebert. The second daughter Hodl (Stephanie Lynne Mason) falls in love with political activist Pertshik (Drew Seigla), while third daughter Khave (Rosie Jo Neddy) falls for the Russian Fyedke played by Cameron Johnson.
Stas Kmiec supervises the choreography, and one of his best touches is having the wedding dancers click their bottles so the audience can hear that they are really made of glass. Joel Grey directs with an emphasis on naturalness, not on shtick. Set designer is Beowulf Boritt, known for Come From Away on Broadway.