Every musical worth its salt reaches for the ecstatic. Quite why it gets there is never just because of one thing or another. Rather it is achieved by all manner of things; book, lyrics, melody, orchestration and design combined with performing talent led here by American Adam Dannheisser in the monumental role of Tevye and the always excellent Lara Pulver as his wife Golde.
So to London-based American director Jordan Fein we must say hats off. His production is as miraculous as the battered trilbies bearing bottles in the superbly performed bottle dance. Here choreographer Julia Cheng hones both her Chasids and the moves first created by director Jerome Robbins for the original 1964 premiere.
The scene combines choreography and tension like no other I can think of, except perhaps the gang fights in West Side Story (also Robbins). At the other end of the scale the show generates moments of mesmerising stillness such as where Tevye and Golde consider that strangest of questions after 25 years of marriage. The query is first expressed in sweet simplicity by Tevye with the song Do You Love Me?, and is then bewilderedly echoed by Golde’s “Do I love you?” before being exquisitely answered when the hand of Pulver’s no-nonsense spouse finally reaches for her husband’s. Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick’s (lyrics) score deserves its position as one of the finest ever written for musical theatre. That the two broke up after tensions created by their faltering next show The Rothschilds will always feel like a loss. But the melodic and lyrical gold they mine from Sholem Aleichem’s Yiddish stories is down to Joseph Stein’s book, which hones the series of tales about a Jewish milkman in a Ukrainian shtetl into a thing loved by people from every walk of life.
This is no small thing in these divided times. When this production opened in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre feelings generated by the war between Israel and Hamas were at fever pitch. A year later they have scarcely dropped. Yet the warm Jewish embrace of this show can be home to those who still see a two-state solution as the only hope and also to those for whom forced migration is as abhorrent for Palestinians as it is for the Jews of Anatevka.
The idea of rich, controlling Jewish cabals looks absurd in the face of this lyrical yet historically accurate account of the Jewish experience with all its grinding poverty and pitiless persecution
More than that, the show is also the best possible antidote to many of the myths that drive today’s tsunami of antisemitism. The idea of rich, controlling Jewish cabals looks absurd in the face of this lyrical yet historically accurate account of the Jewish experience with all its grinding poverty and pitiless persecution. And when Beverley Klein’s pitch-perfect Yente declares she’s had enough and is off to Jerusalem, what better reminder of why Israel was so desperately needed even before the Holocaust.
The best shows simultaneously exist in the time in which they are set and in the lives of their audiences. This one, in which the wardrobe reflects then and now, soars on many a terrific decision by Fein, not least placing the title role – played by the virtuosic violinist Raphael Papo – not just on the roof but in the middle of the action like an observer or, to Dannheisser’s immensity likeable Tevye, a confidant.
As it prepares to tour the UK and Ireland with Matthew Woodyatt in the role of Tevye, this is a production that is as joyous as it is necessary.
Fiddler on the Roof
Barbican
