Tears run true in Trevor Nunn’s pacy revival
Musical Fiddler on the Roof Menier Chocolate Factory
All Fiddlers great and small, whether at the London Palladium or in a space not much bigger than a parking lot, know that they can’t really top Topol.
Yes, it was the legendary Zero Mostel who created the lead role of Tevye the dairyman in the original Broadway smash in 1964. But it was Chaim Topol who made the role his own, on both the big-screen and the West End stage (for yonks). Since then, Henry Goodman and Omid Djalili have played Tevye with terrific verve, but neither had that barrel-chested, peasant-stock immensity that was Topol’s forte.
Now, it’s the turn of actor Andy Nyman, often a presence behind the scenes (he lends his skills as magician, writer and director to Derren Brown’s shows), to step into the boots of this religious-minded rustic, in a fine revival by Trevor Nunn.
Perhaps my ears were playing tricks, but early impressions were that his accent makes the fictional Russian town of Anatevka sound not a million miles from modern-day Archway. But if Nyman doesn’t always sound the part, he looks it: a little youthful, granted, but with his big beard, labourer’s forearms and stout physique, he plausibly incarnates the fretful patriarch. Tevye’s comic earthiness, with consulting glances and offered hands to God, as well as tacit submission to his wife Golde (a likeably formidable Judy Kuhn) is enjoyably rendered. The “daidle, deedle, daidles” in If I Were a Rich Man are delivered with rare frailty, as if giving voice to back spasms.
But as one daughter after another peels away, marrying for reasons of the heart and breaking with hallowed, “tradition”, Nyman wrings out the full measure of mounting anguish and the tears ring true. And truthfulness – or at least a rough shtetl authenticity – is what Nunn’s production is after. Robert Jones’s set presents a Chagallian cluster of slant-roofed wooden houses and over-hanging lanterns. Musicians wander past. All it needs is a chicken or two to complete the picture.
Meanwhile, you can almost smell the concentration of the male wedding guests as they strain to keep bottles balanced on their hats, while executing original choreographer Jerome Robbins’s leg-splaying contortions. In the arm-linked, whirling exuberance elsewhere, you’re inside a world the barbarous 20th-century swept aside.
If the show remains as fresh as ever, it’s because it commemorates that bygone way of life with such élan.
Nunn doesn’t overplay the obvious grim pertinence of a tale in which ugly anti-semitism smoulders and a population is sent packing overseas. In fact – wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles – the director who gave us Les Mis, and who has been known to let things drag, keeps it nicely brisk. Perfect for this time of year.