‘Fiddler’ in a grim time
A special resonance as anti-Semitism rears its ugly head
Somehow, “Fiddler on the Roof ” has become even more Jewish.
The production at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in Battery Park tells the enduring story of love and loss involving Tevye, Golde and their five daughters — five daughters! — in 1905 Russia at a time when Jews weren’t welcome.
This time, though, it’s all in Yiddish.
“It’s such an expressive language that even if you don’t know the word, it translates,” Chris Massimine, CEO of the Folksbiene, told the Daily News. “The emotion, the feeling. It transcends the language. It enhances the language you translate.”
More than 50 years ago, Shraga Friedman, a Polish native who fled to Israel during World War II, translated Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein’s iconic “Fiddler” into Yiddish. For the most part, the show — the original opened on Broadway in 1964 — remained the same, save for a few lyric changes to fit the melody. In “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” instead of a man “as handsome as anything,” Chava and Hodel ask for a man “as clever as anything.”
Friedman’s version ran for about four weeks in Israel in 1965, then never again. There was a brief performance in Canada, too. The Folksbiene’s version is the first time “Fiddler” has been done in Yiddish in the United States, a passion project of Massimine and artistic director Zalmen Mlotek. Then they brought in veteran actor Joel Grey, who once dreamed of playing Tevye on stage, to direct.
It’s a quiet production. Fruma Sarah doesn’t fly during “The Dream,” but rather sits on someone’s shoulders. The fiddler plays on top of a stack of chairs. But it’s still beautiful, it’s still “Fiddler,” cast members said.
“The thing about it being in Yiddish and doing it now, I get the feeling that when it was created in the ’60s, it was more of a success story. Tevye going to America . . . was sort of a view of the shtetl through rose-colored glasses. It was bad, but look where they go,” Steven Skybell, who stars as Tevye, told The News.
“And that has been completely turned on its head right now. Growing up with it, I didn’t see it as a cautionary tale . . . and now it’s a different experience. If it can happen there, it can happen here.”
The show has emerged amid a wave of anti-Semitic incidents across the country.
The production happened to have a week off in late October when 11 people were shot and killed during services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. When the cast returned, they raised $15,000 for the synagogue as part of their Broadway Cares fund-raiser. Last month, a man shouted “Heil Hitler” during an unaffiliated production in Baltimore. Swastikas have been found around the city, including at Columbia University and in Brooklyn.
“It reminds us in a scary way that hatred and racism and bias is still so much in our midst,” Mlotek told The News. “It brings more purpose to the show, makes our work that much more important. Not only are we presenting a piece of entertainment . . . we’re reminding the world that this is not something of the past. We tragically have to face this, not only as Jews but as human beings. The day has to come where this hatred and non-tolerance for the other isn’t the way of life.”
At the Folksbiene, the translations are flashed across screens at the corners of the stage, but the story is so familiar that they’re almost superfluous. Viewers grew up on “Tradition,” “To Life,” “Miracle of Miracles” and “If I Were a Rich Man.”
Most of the cast didn’t know Yiddish before they joined the show, but they all learned, through audio of the dialogue and songs.
Broadway legend Jackie Hoffman, who plays Yente the matchmaker, joked that she knew what her mother called “kitchen Yiddish,” just a few words and phrases she’d picked up along the way.
“The language makes the funny stuff funnier and the tragic stuff more tragic,” she told The News.
For Hoffman, who made a name for herself doing Jewish one-woman shows, the Yiddish makes “Fiddler” even more authentic.
“We’re Jews,” she said. “Get used to it.”
The show, which opened in July, was extended four times. In early February, it’ll move uptown to Off-Broadway’s Stage 42, a bigger stage for a wider — and almost certainly less Jewish — audience. Most of the cast, including some of the original actors who had left at various times over the long run, are moving uptown with the show.
The cast, citing the universality of “Fiddler,” believes their production will work for a more diverse crowd, both a credit to the show and a haunting reminder of the current state of affairs outside the theater walls.
“Fiddler” isn’t supposed to be timely. It takes place in another era and another world. But in a country where people shoot up synagogues and march in the streets with swastikas emblazoned on their jackets, Anatevka doesn’t feel as long and as far away as it should.