MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF


Pictured: Scott Wentworth

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to LFPress
29 MAY 2013
R: 4/5

STRATFORD - It’s not up there with St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, but in the wake of a major effort to restore the Festival Theatre stage to the vision of designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, director Donna Feore has finally accepted the challenges of Stratford’s unique thrust stage. In fact, in her production of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, which opened on that stage Tuesday, there are only a few scenes where she pretends that thrust is a conventional proscenium, ultimately serving up a FIDDLER to all — those in the cheap seats as well as those paying top dollar.

And there is much to recommend Feore’s staging, not the least, her recreation of Jerome Robbins’ thrilling choreography, swirling across Allen Moyer’s Chagall-inspired set like so much human quicksilver. Then, of course, there’s the enduring music, composed by Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick to enliven Joseph Stein’s stage adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s enduring stories of life in the Czarist Russian Jewish community of Anatevka — songs like Tradition, To Life and the deeply touching Sunrise, Sunset and Do You Love Me?, each deeply etched in the bedrock of American musical theatre.

At the heart of the play sits the immortal Tevye (Scott Wentworth), scratching a meagre living for his long-suffering wife Goldie (Kate Hennig) and his five unmarried daughters from his efforts as a dairyman, happily ruled by the religious traditions of centuries. But as his daughters grow and begin to spread their wings — the eldest Tzeitel (Jennifer Stewart) wedding a poor tailor (André Morin), the second Hodel (Jacquelyn French) choosing a revolutionary scholar (Mike Nadajewski, out of control on a comedic pogo schtick) and the third, Chava, (sweet-voiced Keely Hutton), a Russian soldier (Paul Nolan) — Tevye discovers that the most abiding tradition of all is the universal tradition of parents setting a beloved child on the road to happiness. Then, as his daughters change his view of the traditions that shaped his life, Tevye discovers changes shaking the outside world are about to end the world as he knows it.

Feore and her cast make the most of the music and dancing woven throughout FIDDLER, building a strong sense of musical community, but when it comes to fleshing out that community, Feore proves less adroit. Where Tevye spends his days talking to God, Wentworth instead spends much of his time talking to his audience, like a time-travelling Jackie Mason set loose in the Borscht Belt of the Urals.

And while Hennig, Nadajewski and Gabrielle Jones (as Yente, the matchmaker) join Wentworth in the Russian Catskills, actors like Steve Ross, Jeremy Kushnier, Brad Rudy and others dig deeper, mining the human tragedy which spawned the style of humour with which the others cloak themselves. So, in the end, Feore gives us a FIDDLER shy of perfection, but eminently enjoyable — not a FIDDLER for the ages, perhaps, but for today, it’s a FIDDLER you can enjoy.