Omid Djalili’s Fiddler is a roof-raising triumph
Fiddler on the Roof Chichester Festival Theatre
Oy vey! You’ve got to marvel at the sheer chutzpah of the comedian Omid Djalili. There he is, centre-stage in one of our largest auditoriums, in one of the biggest leads in musical theatre: Tevye the milkman in Fiddler on the Roof. And he has not only gotta sing, gotta dance (balancing a bottle on his hat for good measure during a riotous wedding scene), he’s gotta persuade us, for three hours, he’s a kosher Jewish patriarch from an Eastern European shtetl, circa 1905, kvetching to the almighty about his mutinous daughters, his bossy wife, his want of shekels.
The Anglo-iranian funnyman, 51, has appeared as Fagin in the West End. He has also – in The Infidel
– played a British Muslim minicab driver who finds out he’s Jewish. But this is a different order of temerity. He’s following in the hallowed footsteps of original star Zero Mostel and Topol (who took the role on screen too) and upon this struggling everyman’s shoulders rest not only the fate of his kith but also, in a way, the great historical baggage of his kind.
Caught between upholding tradition, with its punitive veneration of arranged marriages, and keeping his family together (young love tugging at the constraints of filial loyalty) he begins the evening complacent in his authority and ends by packing his bags to join the village exodus after a Tsarist pogrom, harbinger of so much 20th-century horror.
There may well be commentators who argue that no matter how committed Djalili is, he’s overstepping the mark. One working title for the 1964 worldwide smash (book by Joseph Stein, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick) was “Where Poppa Came From” – that’s how much it was intended to encapsulate a vanished way of life (derived from the stories of Sholem Aleichem).
Yet from my ordinary-goy vantage point – rather too far back, actually, in Chichester’s unhelpful, intimacy-crushing barn of a main-house – I couldn’t discern Djalili’s performance to be anything other than a triumph. There’s so much gusto, so much delight, taken in the playing of this outwardly simple soul (with a redeeming-endearing capacity for internal self-debate) that Djalili earns his keep (even the temporary right to sport a yarmulke) at every step.
If I Were a Rich Man is a top-dollar hoot, the grey-bearded rustic sculpting the air with his hands at imagined pleasures, wiggling his prayer-scarf-wrapped paunch in self-mocking ecstasy, by turns lumbering and balletic. Djalili’s larger-than-life physicality – comic timing too – works to perfection (you could say he’s finger-clicking good) but with expressive eyebrows, crestfallen looks, and proud chestbeating bouts of indignation, he also catches the confusion at the character’s heart.
He should put plenty of biddy-biddy-bums on seats. The rest of Daniel Evans’s fleet revival – characterful work across the board – is accomplished but could do with more back-of-beyond grime and grit (the design is neater than the dreamy, Chagall-inspired norm, Alistair David’s fresh choreography fine but not massively memorable). Room for improvement? Yes. Still raises the roof, though. Mazel tov!
Until Sept 2. Tickets: 01243 781312; cft.org.uk