“Fiddler on the Roof” at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Mark Shenton in North London
9 August 2024
After the sheer, unadulterated joy of the current Palladium revival of Hello, Dolly!, we now have a no less gorgeous new production of another Broadway musical classic, even if Fiddler on the Roof is ultimately far more serious and even heartbreaking.
Liv Andrusier, Hannah Bristow and Georgia Bruce.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
Interestingly, both shows hail from the same year (1964, with Dolly opening in January that year and Fiddler in September), which was within the late “golden era” of Broadway’s evolution as the greatest provider of innovation, delight, and musicality in the genre. Both shows are set in similar periods to each other, though on different continents: Dolly in 1890s Yonkers and Manhattan, Fiddler in 1905 in a remote Russian shtetl called Anatevka.
And both shows also feature busybody marital matchmakers at their centres, Dolly Levi herself and Yente, respectively, now being played by two utter forces of nature, the justly acclaimed Imelda Staunton and the more underrated Beverley Klein here (both of whom have coincidentally brilliantly played Mrs Lovett in different revivals of Sweeney Todd).
But where Dominic Cooke’s production of Dolly provides spectacle and happiness in abundance, American director Jordan Fein offers a more nuanced and subtle approach to the much darker themes of Fiddler. (The propulsive book is by the late Joseph Stein, also currently represented in London by a revival of his 1976 musical The Baker’s Wife.) Fein – who was an associate director on the 2019 Broadway reinvention of Oklahoma! which he co-directed when it transferred to the Young Vic and then the West End – is good at interrogating the text of Fiddler and setting an alternately tense and tender mood for it to play out on. Some may be relieved to hear that this Fiddler isn’t quite as bold or interventionist as was the truly radical Oklahoma!, conceived by Daniel Fish.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
But you still know that this Fiddler will have different designs on our attention, quite literally so in the case of Tom Scutt’s beautiful rustic interior designs, topped out by a roof out of which corn stalks appears to be sprouting. (However, this is nowhere nearly like the recent Broadway musical Shucked, which put the corn into corny.) A similar expanse of corn has to be negotiated stage left as characters enter and leave the stage.
Yet if the production and its cast live in a different physical space than we’re used to, the traditional values of this most sublimely crafted musical are meticulously honoured, even as the show itself reveals the gradual usurping of some of the traditions that have long underpinned this community.
Jewish milkman Tevye’s family of five daughters become determined to make their own marital choices, to the endless disapproval of mother Golde (a luminous but harried Lara Pulver). Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s forever captivating and catchy songs are splendidly delivered under the musical direction of Dan Turek (supervised by Mark Aspinall), though the sound balance is occasionally too loud.
They’re also sung with full-hearted vigour and graceful rigour, particularly the warm and earthy Tevye of Broadway actor Adam Dannheisser. The rich quintet of daughters are lovingly brought to life by Liz Andrusier (as eldest daughter Tzeitel), Georgia Bruce (Hodel), Hannah Bristow (Chava), Darya Topol Margarith (Shprintze), and (Georgia Dixon (Bielke).
And as the title character, Raphael Papo brings musicianship and presence to a production that is full of both qualities.
