Someone give the Fiddler a new tune
Fiddler On The Roof (Playhouse Theatre) Verdict: Middling fiddler, lovely roof
SOMEHOW they’ve roughed this place up and turned the Playhouse into a homely but rickety shack. Bare tree branches, a warm sky, candle lanterns — and of course roofs! — stretch out from the back wall of the stage to the back shelf of the bar. It’s a romantic, sumptuously lit scene. Which is roughly where Trevor Nunn’s new production of this 1964 classic sits on my critical thermometer: it looks better than it is. The folksy band, the solid voices, the athletic staging, the whole whiff of it is some of the West End’s best . . . but not quite enough to polish a middling musical. I understand I’ll now be shunned in theatreland and forced to return my critic’s badge and pencil, but If I Were A Rich Man and Matchmaker aside, this is unmoving stuff. Andy Nyman is the papa Tevye: the romantic father of five girls living in a close-knit, gossipy village in the Jewish parts of 1900 Imperial Russia. A cry of ‘Tradition’ is the opening number, but one by one the girls break away from the matchmaking norms in favour of love. Nyman isn’t the strongest singer — it’s more tuneful talking. But he makes up for that with a great stomping presence, hearty passion, flappy hands and a bushy beard. His eldest, Tzeitel (Molly Osborne), has a corking voice and makes a terribly good West End debut. But the evening’s saviours are the sharp comic turns of the nosy matchmaker (Louise Gold) and the old jilted butcher (Dermot Canavan). Nunn revs the old girl for all she’s worth — two dance numbers in particular had the room’s adrenaline pumping; and parties and booze-ups are staged incredibly well. And the final moments are touching and tastefully done. But it was a slow, sweetly forgettable 150 minutes: a delicious production weighed down by a flabby score.