• Fidler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof)

7/19/18 (Thurs), National Yiddish Theatre

A Fiddler in Yiddish – sounds crazy, no? This was a Yiddish version that played in Israel in 1965, just a year after the show debuted on Broadway, and has evidently not been seen since. I was going to take advantage of a rare Thursday matinee – the show doesn’t play on Fri nights or Sat matinees, for reasons obvious if you’re Jewish – but a friend happened to be going that night and had an extra ticket.

As it turns out, this was not just another Fiddler. The use of Yiddish, which would have been the language of the characters in real life, provided an unexpectedly fresh perspective on the familiar show. The word “Torah” written in Hebrew/Yiddish on a large cloth hanging in the back reminded us of what tradition was all about – not national culture or local community as in most productions (including the Japanese version) but Judaism. (The lyricist, still alive and kicking, reportedly refused to allow them to substitute the word Torah for “tradition” in the opening number, but the shrewd placement of the written word front and center, visible throughout the show, made the stakes crystal clear.) It is Torah that binds the community together, meaning that the community goes well beyond Anatevka or any single place. That is especially evident when the cloth is shockingly ripped apart in the pogrom at the end of Act I and reappears, stitched unevenly back, for Act 2. This approach is presumably closer to what Sholem Aleichem had in mind in his original stories. It casts the show in an entirely different light from the sanitized Broadway version, making it less universal, at least in an obvious sense, and more Jewish. I doubt the show could have succeeded commercially as it did in this version, but it emerges as even more powerful.

The adept staging by Joel Grey managed impressively to fit a normal 26-strong cast (most of whom had to learn Yiddish for their roles) and sizable orchestra into a small venue. The dances, based on Robbins’ original, were wonderfully performed in the limited space, highlighted by spectacular Russian dancing in a lively “To Life” sequence (shame about the dumb ending).

The entire cast was extremely good, including terrific singing all around. Steven Skybell was a commanding Tevye in every way, Mary Illes as Golde provided notable support with an unusually good singing voice for this role, Jackie Hoffman (the only performer I knew) played Yentl without her usual shtick to great comic effect, and Ben Liebert was a superb Motel the tailor. The typical New Yorker will only be able to understand bits of the Yiddish (“A fiddler on the roof. Meshuggeh, no?” – a different rendering, incidentally, from the 1965 recording), but the attitude comes across in spades. The surtitles reflected the translation rather than original lyrics, which proved very interesting (e.g. “If I Were a Rothschild”). The show felt big in scale despite the small space. A revelation.