Fiddler On The Roof - Review

Barbican Theatre, London

****

Book by Joseph Stein

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Music by Jerry Bock

Directed by Jordan Fein

Raphael Papo

Jordan Fein’s revival of Fiddler On The Roof first seen at London’s Open Air Theatre last year, returns to the city’s Barbican Theatre before a nationwide tour to last the rest of the year. As Tevye and Golde, Adam Dannheiser and Lara Pulver remain in their leading roles with both having matured from 2024.

Dannheiser always commanded the essentials of a Tevye . A big, bearded, Bear Jew of a man devoted to both family and faith and convincing as he deploys both humour and perfectly pitched pathos in his wrestling with life’s challenges, Dannheiser’s performance is one of the evening’s delights.

Pulver has grown in the last 12 months. Her role is now fully formed and be it gossiping with Yente, nagging Tevye, or just being the all-caring matriarch to her family, hers is a great Golde. While Tevye gets most of the juicy singing numbers in the show, Pulver, who’s musical theatre credentials are impeccable, makes fine work of the duetting balladry gifted to her by Harnick and Bock. Natasha Jules Bernard steps up to the role of Tzeitel, with Georgia Bruce returning as Hodel and Hannah Bristow as the clarinet playing Chava continuing to give Tevye one of the toughest challenges that can face an orthodox Jew.

Fiddler On The Roof is a Broadway classic and this production’s details are a treat. Beverley Klein’s maturely considered Yente and Raphael Papo’s enchanting Fiddler are fabulous. Julia Cheng’s choreography excites, while Tom Scutt’s ingenious design has beautifully translated the shtetl of Anatevka from the elements of Regent’s Park to the conventions of traditional theatre.

This musical remains a story of hope interwoven with never-ending tragedy. The show is set in Tsarist Russia around the turn of the 20th century when state-sponsored antisemitism was the norm, and the dark clouds of the Holocaust that was to befall European Jewry hadn’t even begun to form. Playing out in 2025, as calls for the destruction of the Jewish state echo around the world, the United Nations spouts blood libels that are echoed by governments and the media and murderous Jew-hate is manifest from Washington DC to Colorado, it feels like little has changed. 

This is a beautiful production playing to a very ugly world.

Runs until 19th July, then on tour

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Fiddler On The Roof - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

***

Adam Dannheiser

Book by Joseph Stein

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Music by Jerry Bock

Directed by Jordan Fein

Much like the village of Anatevka itself, Jordan Fein’s production of Fiddler On The Roof is a microcosmic melting pot, not only of the marvellous but also of the mediocre. It gives a curious message that the show's producers have decided that its main publicity image promoting and celebrating the show, should be of Chava (played by Hannah Bristow), the one daughter of Tevye and Golde who deserts her Jewish heritage to marry outside the faith, rather than upholding 'tradition'. Notwithstanding this unusual bias, Fein’s interpretation has managed to retain the show’s cultural essence.

This is of course the first Fiddler On The Roof to play in London since the horrors of October 7 2023. The pogrom that befalls a community of dancing, celebrating Jews and which closes the first act, leaving Anatevka in flames, chills in its identical ideology of hatred that led to the massacre at Israel’s Nova Music Festival last year.

Hannah Bristow as Chava in the show's main publicity image

Fein makes gorgeous use of Raphael Papo as The Fiddler. His violinist serves as a musical interpretation of Tevye’s (Adam Dannheiser) Jewish conscience, and intriguingly is rarely offstage. This is a beautiful touch, for Jerry Bock’s melodies written for the Fiddler deserve the centre-stage attention given to them by Fein.

Dannheiser himself (last seen by this reviewer as an outstanding Lazar Wolf on Broadway) is an adequate Tevye. Vocally strong, but occasionally disconnected, particularly in his brief exchanges his God, that feel as though they are played more for laughs than for sincerity. Lara Pulver is Golde, in possibly the worst miscasting to have been seen in years. Pulver is one of the more gifted musical theatre performers of her generation but her Golde lacks a shtetl-based warmth. Clipped and reserved, she appears more Lucille Frank (her outstanding 2007 role of an Atlantan Jewish spouse subject to horrific antisemitism) rather than Tevye’s loyal wife of 25 years.  Vocally strong, but with barely any detectable acting through song, her Golde disappoints. Similarly Dan Wolff’s Motel fails to convince us of the sincerity of his love for Liv Andrusier’s Tzeitel. The show however is in its early days and both of these flaws can yet be remedied by Fein.

Tom Scutt’s set is enchanting, a roofed canopy across much of the theatre’s stage, itself topped with fields of corn. It is a visual that works stunningly. Tevye’s Dream too is a comic delight that has been cleverly conceived. Upstage, Dan Turek’s 11-piece band are a delight. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s songs are timeless works of genius and for the most part, especially in the company numbers, are worth the price of the ticket.

Runs until 21st September

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Fiddler on the Roof - Review

Broadway Theatre, New York

*****

Book by Joseph Stein

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Music by Jerry Bock

Based on the Sholom Aleichem stories

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Alexandra Silber and Adam Kantor

Bartlett Sher’s interpretation of Fiddler on the Roof casts fresh eyes over one of the most beloved shows in the canon. Sheldon Harnick's lyrics remain as written, but much of the dance has been deliciously expanded, transforming a 20th century classic, about 19th century Russia, into a 21st century masterpiece.

Memorable Fiddlers have always been about the Tevye - and on this review visit, the much lauded Danny Burstein was replaced by understudy Adam Grupper. To be fair, as the evening played out, Grupper grew wonderfully into the role with the classic narrative losing nothing through the re-shuffle, for in this Fiddler, above all, it is the sum of its parts that define its magnificence.

Jessica Hecht's Golde is as wise and all-knowing as Harnick and Stein intended. Torn between her maternal love for her kids and her spiritual commitment to her faith, the pain as these two worlds collide with daughter Chava's marriage to the gentile Fyedka, she breaks our hearts, struggling with her dilemma. Whilst Sholom Aleichem’s characters may all have been larger than life, Hecht keeps her Golde inspirationally grounded – and beautifully voiced!

Perhaps the most enchanting dynamic on stage is the love that blossoms between Alexandra Silber's Tzeitel (Tevye and Golde's eldest child) and Adam Kantor's Motel the tailor. Silber is no stranger to the show having been a delightful Hodel in London's West End 8 years ago. Here however, and in a role that convinces as a teenager, she brings a well-crafted interpretation to the complex nuances of the young woman she portrays. Her terror at the thought of marriage to the much older Lazar Wolf is palpable, whilst her love for Motel is as believable as is heartwarming. And, of course, Silber possess one of the finest musical theatre presences of her generation, bringing a piquancy to Matchmaker that explores new depths within the famed lyrics.

Likewise, Kantor's Motel is a delight. I last reviewed the actor in his recording of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years and it is clear that he is as comfortable in portraying a young Jewish man's angst irrespective of the century his character is placed in. His take on Motel, the charming nebbish who grows a spine, makes us love and laugh with, the tailor – with his take on Miracle Of Miracles proving a delight.

To be fair, Samantha Massell's Hodel alongside Melanie Moore's Chava both offer an enchanting and revived look as the elder of Tzeitel's four siblings - and in a nod to another understudy, George Psomas' Perchik was a class act too. 

Bartlett Sher's direction is at once sensitive and inspirational. The opening scene sees "Tevye", anorak clad in the modern day, arriving at Anatevka station, guidebook in hand. As he reads his guidebook aloud, it is clear that this Fiddler is not just celebrating the Jews of Tsarist Russia, it is also memorialising the Jewish communities of Europe, so throughly eradicated by Hitler some 40 years later and with a gruesome efficiency that the Tsar could only have dreamed of. Sher's use of the Fiddler too - weaving throughout so much of the action only enhances the music's roots. The final expulsion from Anatevka - the characters silhouetted only in relief, is as tragic as it is brilliantly simple.

It's the little touches too - as the Jews of Anatevka are dispersed we see Lazar Wolf (in a wonderful turn from Adam Dannheisser), unnoticed and seeking no thanks, slip a wad of cash into the impoverished Tevye's luggage.

Michael Yeargan’s set design is ingenious, combining simplicity with world class stage technology. In a show that memorialises the destruction of European Jewry as much as telling the fabled tales from the shtetl, characters don’t just come on from the wings they emerge, walking up steps from an upstage pit, enhancing the setting's spirituality. Some of the scenery is wooden cottages that the characters inhabit, whilst other constructions are smaller homes that hover, ghost like, above the action, suggesting the style of the Marc Chagall pictures that so famously inspired Bock, Harnick and the show's original director Hal Prince, back when Fiddler was evolving in the 1960's.

Hofesh Shechter’s choreography is visionary. His routines respect Jerome Robbin's original themes, but with more music to play with, there is even more of Bock's fabulous fusion of klezmer and cantorial to set the movement to. The big numbers of Tradition and Tevye's Dream are re-imagined here in an explosion of dance that brings this forgotten world of orthodox Judaism bang up to date. And where The Wedding is usually remembered for its breathtaking bottle dancing, Schechter doesn't disappoint - but rather expands the celebration into a joyous explosion of dance that sees the gender barriers taken down with wit and subtlety. 

There is also something re-assuringly "authentic" in seeing the show in New York, and with a significantly Jewish cast. Whilst theatre does not need to be confined to racial or gender constraints, remember that this show was originally written by the descendants of European immigrants, for an American audience. Listen carefully to the self-deprecating Jewish humour that Harnick delicately sprinkles over his lyrics and there's echoes of Frank Loesser and Damon Runyon, along with an ironic seam that continues to this day in the work of Mel Brooks and others. 

Fiddler on the Roof works beautifully on Broadway. As its timeless message demands to be unforgettable, so is this show unmissable.

Booking until 31st December