Book: Joseph Stein
Lyrics: Sheldon Harnick
Music: Jerry Bock
Director: Jordan Fein
The first thing one notices in the transfer of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s production of Fiddler on the Roof is, of course, the set. The wheat-laden roof of Tom Scutt’s impressive design is now movable and less curved, flying up to reveal a space beneath that forms the shtetl of Anatevka or down for more intimate moments.
The wheat surrounds the playing space on three sides, further emphasising the small village’s relative isolation from the outside world, at the play’s beginning at least. The underside of the roof is a vast slab of concrete, the shtetl’s name embossed into it. A metaphor, maybe, for the weight of oppression felt by the younger villagers, especially the daughters of Tevye the milkman, who are seeking new ways to engage with the world despite their father’s acclaimed fondness for tradition.
As the beleaguered milkman, Adam Dannheisser returns to his Olivier-nominated role to bring a melancholy side to a character most usually played for more laughs. Dannheisser’s Tevye is a celebrant of tradition, for sure, but nor does it bind him; his love for his daughters is so strong that he must face up to a changing world, especially the daring conceit that women may want a say in how their lives turn out.
Opposite him, Lara Pulver plays his wife, Golde, with a similar air of resignation. When a hungover Tevye sleeps in, it is Golde who rallies the family to split his work. Even among the poverty rife in Anatevka, they are among the poorest, but Pulver’s steely determination makes her children’s lives all the more tolerable. When the couple debate their actual feelings for one another after 25 years of marriage in Do You Love Me?, the sense of exhausted affection from both parties is palpable.
The sense of creeping dread, of external politics (particularly the antisemitic sentiments of the Tsarist ruling classes) encroaching on a harmless little village, builds up quietly at first under Jordan Fein’s sensitive direction. Occasional use of anachronistic prop and costume choices – a metal chair here, a pair of cargo pants there – reminds us of how, despite Fiddler’s book coming from short stories written as the 19th century turned into the 20th, the sense of oppression, of forcing villagers to become refugees to survive, is eternal. From Ukraine to Palestine, the parallels are there to be expanded upon if we so choose.
One can also consider this production purely as a historical piece, of course. Its love stories between Tevye’s eldest daughters and the increasingly inappropriate men they prefer over the village matchmaker’s choices are both sweet and a reminder of the changing world that Tevye struggles with. Dan Wolff’s Motel is a lightly comic portrayal, but one can quite believe that Natasha Jules Bernard’s Tzeitel would fall for him. Dramatically and romantically more interesting is Daniel Krikler’s Perchik, who is unafraid to break any number of misogynistic taboos in order to pursue Tevye and Golde’s second eldest, Hodel (Georgia Bruce).
The threat of violent pogroms – a minor “demonstration” of which leaves the wheat fields charred and smoking at the end of Act I – hangs over proceedings at all times. Even when the community is at its happiest, there is a sense of a village holding its breath. In his prologue, Tevye introduces the concept of living life as “a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck.” Raphael Papo’s omnipresent Fiddler is a reminder throughout that this is what the residents of Anatevka are all doing – holding on for dear life, because the alternative bears no thought.
The Open Air Theatre’s production may, in its original home, have had the benefit of natural lighting that darkened as the play progresses, starting in evening sunshine and descending into black night. Indoors, that oppressive blackness is with us from the start. Another reminder that it matters not how much we fiddle, the external forces of darkness pervade. Now, as much as ever, Fiddler on the Roof is a historical lesson for today’s world.
Continues until 19 July 2025
