Fiddler on the Roof
Book: Joseph Stein Music: Jerry Bock Lyrics: Sheldon Harnick Director: Daniel Evans Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, West Sussex (01243-781312) Until 2 September Running time: 2hrs 45mins (including interval)
“The Chichester hit factory triumphs again,” said Fiona Mountford in the London Evening Standard. Over recent years, Britain’s most “consistently classy regional theatre” has served up a string of stonking musical revivals, and under its new artistic director, Daniel Evans, it proves “tuneful business as usual” with this “rich and detailed” production of the 1964 classic. Omid Djalili, the Anglo-iranian comedian, is “inspired casting” as Tevye, the Jewish milkman coping both with family life in the shtetl and with the rumbling threat of pogroms, said Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times. In a “superb” performance, Djalili is both hilarious and touching, and proves more than capable of putting over such brilliant numbers as Tradition, To Life, and, of course, If I Were a Rich Man. Tracy-ann Oberman is also “terrific” as his comically ghastly wife, Golde.
For decades, Fiddler on the Roof was one of those shows, much like West Side Story, whose “brilliance” was obscured by revivals which remained “locked into the staging traditions of the mid-20th century Broadway musicals”, said Lyn Gardner in The Guardian. In recent years, that has begun to change: productions have become less folksy and schmaltzy, and more realistic, restrained and dark. Evans’s excellent production is firmly within this more realistic tradition, while remaining both funny and joyous. The set is a “distinctly austere and modern” space that can be transformed with just a few planks and suitcases. The acting is emotionally honest and truthful, and the Jewish villagers come across not as remote figures from the past, but as contemporary people – they could be today’s refugees – driven from their homes by global politics.
I actually felt Evans’s “fleet revival” could have done with even more “grime and grit”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Still, Djalili is a “triumph” – more than earning the “temporary right to sport a yarmulke” – and the show still “raises the roof”. “Mazel tov!” In sum, it’s a winner, agreed Dominic Maxwell in The Times. “Don’t be surprised if it reaches the West End.”