Fiddler on the Roof’s golden couple: ‘Our Tevye and Golda chemistry is real’

Jordan Fein’s Olivier Award-winning production of Fiddler on the Roof has transferred from Regent’s Park Open Air theatre to the Barbican. One afternoon the show’s stars – American actor Adam Dannheisser and British stage and screen star Lara Pulver – sat with John Nathan in Adam’s dressing room between matinee and evening performances to talk about playing musical theatre’s most adored married couple, Tevye and Golde.

Both performers were nominated for Olivier Awards. In Pulver’s case this was her second consecutive nomination since winning for playing the title role in Gypsy opposite Imelda Staunton’s Mama Rose. Pulver has just finished today’s matinee show. Dannheisser does the evening show only because Tevye is such a huge role.

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AD: How was the show, darling?

LP: I’m a little bit tired, but I’m good.

JN: “Darling” – that answers my first question. I was wondering if the on-stage chemistry existed off stage. There is something very marital about that word.

We’re the most married non-married couple in the world

AD: We’re the most married non-married couple in the world.

JN: But you were with a different Tevye today, Lara.

LP: I was. [Whispering] Don’t tell him. I have a bit on the side.

AD: I know all about it.

JN: Tevye is a monumental role. Is that why you can’t do two shows in a day?

AD: That’s right. It has more to do with vocal stamina than physical, just because there’s obviously a lot of singing, a lot of speaking and a fair amount of yelling.

JN: Congratulations on the production. I’ve seen a few Fiddlers and this one is special.

LP: Aw, thank you.

JN: You’ve been in one already, Adam.

AD: I’ve been in one [in New York playing the shtetl’s butcher Lazar Wolf] but I’ve not been Tevye before.

LP: I haven’t been in one and I’ve never seen one!

JN: Really? You’re a musical theatre star and Fiddler is one of the most often revived musicals.

LP: Well, I’ve done a musical roughly every ten years. It’s quite embarrassing really. People say, “Oh, you were in that? That was ten years ago!” Or: “You were in that? That was 20 years ago!”

JN: So the one 20 years ago must have been Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, where you played Cathy, the non-Jewish wife of Jewish Jamie about a courtship and marriage that goes wrong.

LP: I played a “shiksa”.

JN: Not just a shiksa. You played Shiksa Goddess as described by one of the show’s songs.

LP: I did.

AD: Makes sense.

LP: And then [composer] Jason Robert Brown cast me in Parade at the Donmar [for which Lara was also nominated for an Olivier]. He said: “You didn’t tell me you were Jewish!”

JN: But your Golde has no Yiddishe mama about her.

LP: All I can go with is what’s on the page – a woman who works incredibly hard, who’s devoted to her husband, who is conflicted with having raised five trailblazer daughters who are now threatening everything that we stand for.

JN: You sound like you admire them.

LP: I grew up with very little, a single-parent family, sister’s hand-me-downs. We didn’t have the money to afford very much and I was so fortunate that I had a work ethic and a hunger for the scraps and scholarships I was given to pursue things I love. I said to my husband the other day that I feel very conflicted because we are fortunate enough to offer our children more opportunity than I ever had, but I wonder how that impacts on their work ethic. The girls in [the song] Matchmaker talk about what they hope for and I as Golde am thinking that wealth will stop them starving. But as myself I’m also thinking there is a lack of graft and humility in that. So that is a very long way of saying that I get all of this and more from the script in Fiddler.

JN: I was surprised when you were cast as Golde. Your previous stage roles are generally so young.

I had this idea of a woman who was quite matronly. And because the last thing I’d played was a suppressed child I thought, do I want to do this?

LP: When my agent called and said a chap called Jordan Fein would like to talk to you about doing a production of Fiddler on the Roof, my response to my wonderful Jewish agent was, “Oh, to play Tzeitel!”, and she went, “Nooooo” and I replied “Hodel??”, and she said NO! Golde!” And in my head I said:“Oh!” I had this idea of a woman in her mid to late fifties who was quite matronly. And I think because the last thing I’d done on stage was Gypsy where I played a suppressed child. I was thinking, do I want to do this? But that bubble was burst by Jordan when I met him.

JN: What did he say?

LP: We just talked about family; his family, my family. I’m a mum. I’ve got an eight-year-old and a four-year-old. And then I bought Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories and realised that Golde was dead by the time she was in her mid-forties. All the myth of the famous stage role was suddenly gone. She’s a mother with five daughters. So, of course, she was having children at around the age of 18.

AD: She’s been married to Tevye for 25 years. So, you know, you do the maths.

JN: Have you drawn on any family members for your Tevye?

AD: Yes, my mother’s family comes from the region in which Fiddler is set and they experienced much of this in their time. My father’s family is German, so we lost a lot of folks on that side. So yes, culturally, I’m so connected. But the the most central figure in my mind is my grandfather on my mother’s side. He is so part of my Tevye, the love and adoration that he shows towards the people in his life, and the grumpy anger.

JN: What was his name?

AD: Arthur Colodny. Like Lara, I came from a broken home and my grandparents were very much on the scene. Their dynamic was a lot like our Tevye and Golde dynamic. He could just be gruff and grumpy and she would just tell a joke or something to dissolve the moment. Or snap back at him. I’m not big into that “who is my performance inspired by” thing, but this Tevye is so my grandfather. When I got engaged he said to me, “Don’t screw this up!”

JN: Lara, when we first spoke in 2008 for the comedy Beau Jest in which you played a Jewish girl trying to trick her parents into thinking your boyfriend was Jewish, you told me that although your mother had converted to Judaism she and your Jewish father had split by the time you were 11.

LP: Probably a bit younger, but yes.

JN You said the play, which had a very funny seder scene, made you think about your grandparents on your father’s side. I wondered if they’re in your mind for Fiddler too.

LP: It’s interesting because I remember my grandmother, who’s no longer with us, doing the brochah over the candles on Shabbat.

JN: Which you do in the show.

LP: Now I’m on stage wishing they were here for me to interrogate more. But at the same time I know that by osmosis I have everything that I’m meant to have from them for this role. It’s in me. Yet this particular show reaches beyond that. We live at a time where it’s very relevant. Before our opening night I went to see Giant [about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism]

JN: Back in 2008 you told me that Helen Mirren was on your bucket list of people you wanted to work with. And now after watching you in Fiddler people can go home and watch you in Guy Ritchie’s latest, MobLand where you play Helen Mirren’s daughter-in-law.

LP: I know! Someone told me I’ve got the “golden ticket” with massive hit TV show and a hit stage shows at the same time. But it’s all so transitory and arbitrary the way things end up falling into your lap.

JN: Adam, I heard Fagin was on your bucket list of roles you want to play.

AD: Why, is Oliver! [currently in the West End starring Simon Lipkin] coming to New York? Call my manager!

JN: After that all you need is Shylock and you’ll have the full set.

AD: Jew through and through.

JN: And you, Lara, apart from Gypsy, who I don’t think is Jewish, so many of your stage roles have either been Jewish or have a Jewish connection. There was Cathy in the Last Five Years, who was married to a Jew...

LP: Yes,

JN: Lucille...

LP: In Parade, yes.

JN: That comedy Beau Jest where you played a Jewish girl who fakes having a Jewish boyfriend…,

LP: At the Hackney Empire, yes.

JN: And now Golde. I suppose the question is, what’s with the Jewish roles?

LP: I’m the only Jewish woman in London.

JN: That must be it. Do you have a bucket list for roles?

LP: I always feel icky thinking about the future in that way. Just hearing you speak about the roles I’ve played, if I can keep on that trajectory I’m happy. Working opposite great people and with great directors, I’ve been super-fortunate.

JN: The chemistry between your Golde and Adam’s Tevye is definitely part of that.

AD: I think it’s because Lara and I really get each other. We really value family, love, community and kindness and compassion over everything.

LN: That’s true.

AD: We get how the other works. God knows how many times the show has been done where the people playing Tevye and Golde hated each other off stage. In this show every night, backstage in the dark, we hug and cry.

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Fiddler on the Roof is at the Barbican until July 19 and then tours in the UK and Ireland