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Evening Standard
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Fiddler on the Roof at the Barbican: 'This is a must-see'
Beverley Klein is very funny as the gabbling matchmaker Yente, as is Dan Wolff as Tzeitel's waftily diffident beloved, Motel. Papo's fiddler is a shadow or sounding board for Tevye here, integrated into the action, and later paired with Hannah Bristow as Tevye's daughter Chava, whose clarinet counterpoint to his plangent violin expresses her rejection of the old ways. The cast mostly use their own accents – both the Jewish publican and Chava's Russian lover Fyedka are Scottish – which emphasises the universality of this Jewish story.
Boston Globe
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Hats in the ring? Maybe. Hats on the stage? Definitely.
Or turn your eyes to Broadway, where 'Wicked' is still playing to full houses more than two decades after it premiered (and five months after an But as the hat-wearing Elphaba defiantly begins to dance by herself, making the hat her own, Galinda's mean-spiritedness transforms into something like empathy. She begins to dance with Elphaba. It's the beginning of an unlikely friendship that will ultimately take 'Wicked' to a deeper place — and that friendship became a key part of the reason the musical continues to resonate so profoundly with girls and women. Advertisement The history of the American theater abounds with memorable hats that have been used to swiftly establish character, time, and place. And, sometimes, authorial voice, as with Stephen Adly Guirgis's mordant comedy-drama 'The Mother------ with the Hat.' Advertisement Zero Mostel as Tevye sings to Golde, his wife, played by Thelma Lee in a scene from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof." New York Times Hats can also serve as a signifier of social status. Consider Tevye's cap in 'Fiddler on the Roof.' As careworn as he is, that hat embodies the countless mornings Tevye has spent delivering milk to the villagers of Anatevka. And the headscarves worn by the Jewish women in 'Fiddler,' including Tevye's wife, Golde, signal their attachment to custom and tradition — the very things that are under siege. Or look at the faded, flat-brimmed straw hat that 20-year-old Julie Andrews wore as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the opening scene at Covent Garden in 'My Fair Lady,' which premiered on Broadway in 1956. And, later, the staggering array of wide-brimmed hats worn by the women, including Eliza, in the Ascot racetrack scene. A hat can also punctuate key moments in a musical or play. Because we learn so much about the individual dancers in 'A Chorus Line,' we know what landing a role in a Broadway show will mean to them, professionally and personally. So we're moved by the big closing number, 'One,' when the dancers — those who got cast in the show and those who didn't — unite in synchronized movement, donning and doffing gold top hats to underscore what they did for love, to borrow a phrase. Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop, in 'Boop! The Musical' at the Broadhurst Theater in Manhattan, March 10, 2025. SARA KRULWICH/NYT A hat can also serve as a visual motif that forges a connection across eras. When 'Boop! The Musical' premiered on Broadway earlier this month, featuring Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop, Rogers wore a '30s-style top hat in one scene — the decade in which the animated cartoon flapper made her first appearance. Advertisement In September, Keanu Reeves will make his Broadway debut in Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot.' He's slated to play Estragon, one of the bowler hat-wearing tramps trying to puzzle out the riddle of existence. (All four principal characters in 'Godot' wear hats.) The cast for this fall's revival will also include Alex Winter, Reeves's costar in the film 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure,' as Vladimir. A revival of Kander and Ebb's 'Cabaret' opened a year ago on Broadway and is still running, with Eva Noblezada (Eurydice in 'Hadestown') playing Sally Bowles. Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret." Warner Brothers But no stage performer can hope to displace the memory of 'Cabaret,' the movie, was directed by Bob Fosse. As he began losing his hair at a relatively young age, Fosse had taken to wearing hats. Soon, fedoras and derbies — not just on the head but in the hands — became a core part of his signature style, as vital as hip rolls and jazz hands. When Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' was revived three years ago, the production simultaneously made history as the first 'Salesman' where all four Lomans were portrayed by Black actors, and connected with history. As in the 1949 premiere, starring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, the revival opened with the sight of Wendell Pierce, as Willy, the picture of weariness beneath his hat, a pair of valises on the floor before him after another unsuccessful sales trip. Advertisement At the end of the play, standing by Willy's grave after he died by suicide, his friend Charley says of a traveling salesman: ''He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.' Of course, sometimes a hat is just a hat, a way to heighten a scene and/or make a big stage personality even bigger. Consider the gigantic red feathered headdress — roughly the size of an aircraft carrier — that was worn by Bette Midler as Dolly Levi Gallagher when Dolly descended the stairs at the Harmonia Gardens in the 2017 revival of 'Hello, Dolly!' (Equally sizable were the hats worn by other Dollys: Carol Channing, who originated the role; Pearl Bailey; Bernadette Peters.) Jonathan Groff as King George III in "Hamilton." Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Disney+/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictu A piece of headgear can help an actor get a firmer fix on his character or shape their approach to a role — sometimes in unexpected ways, as happened with Jonathan Groff when he stepped into the role of King George in the 2015 Broadway premiere of 'Hamilton.' As the musical obliterated one attendance record after another, Groff's characterization of the malevolently amusing monarch became associated with the measured, careful glide with which the actor materialized onstage from the wings. 'The crown was so heavy at first,' Groff explained in a Advertisement And Sondheim? Fourteen years after 'Company,' when Broadway's greatest composer-lyricist sought to capture in song the arduous process of artistic creation, he chose to do so with a hat as his vehicle. In 'Finishing the Hat,' in 'Sunday in the Park with George,' his musical about the pointillist painter Georges Seurat, Sondheim gave the painter lines that captured the apartness and obsessive labor that making art requires, as well as its occasional satisfactions. 'There's a part of you always standing by/ Mapping out the sky/ Finishing a hat/ Starting on a hat/ Finishing a hat/ Look, I made a hat/ Where there never was a hat.' But Seurat — and Sondheim — knew what most artists know: There is ultimately no way to ever truly finish the hat. Don Aucoin can be reached at
Miami Herald
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Inside Zoetic Stage's ‘Fiddler' and what it means to present the musical now
'Fiddler on the Roof' has been on Zoetic Stage Artistic Director Stuart Meltzer's wish list for quite for some time. The director has been waiting to stage a production for years, he confides. This season, his wish is granted. Playwright Joseph Stein's 'Fiddler on the Roof' is an ageless classic for many reasons. While its story depicts the struggle of a traveling Jewish milkman named Tevye, who, yes, knows how to play the fiddle, it ultimately is a tale about family and love. It features such universal — and timeless — themes that it's no wonder it has been revived countless times and still being produced since its Broadway debut in 1964. Although 'Fiddler on the Roof' is a classic musical, there's always room for artistic interpretation. While Zoetic Stage is a small, 11-person company, Meltzer says he used this as an opportunity to get creative. On par with the theater company's mission to create bold interpretations of plays, Meltzer and his team dreamed up the idea of using puppets to help move the story along. 'We have a rabbi puppet, we have an innkeeper puppet, we have our Russians,' lists Meltzer. 'If we can bring a little joy to the audience through the puppets, let's go ahead and do it.' Zoetic Stage's production of 'Fiddler on the Roof' begins with a preview Thursday then opens on Friday through April 6 in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Meltzer believes that the play's fundamental storyline about family automatically makes it relatable and relevant, no matter the place or decade. 'We keep coming back to 'Fiddler' in different periods of time and we ask ourselves, 'What can we see from it? What can we learn from it? What can we gain from it?' Aside from everything, it also has this wonderful music that is not necessarily incredibly complex but is something that is memorable and wonderful.' The plot concerns Tevye, a father and husband, and his family dynamics. His eldest daughter, Tzeitel, wants to get married to a man she loves rather than the future husband her family has picked for her. Set in 1905 in the Empire of Russia, such notions were unheard of. However, being a man of faith and a father who loves his daughter, Tevye decides he needs to work through what he should do while the world changes around him. Meltzer says the choice to produce 'Fiddler on the Roof' was a deliberate one, especially with what's happening around the world. Since last October's Hamas attack in Israel, reports of antisemitism around the globe continue to be on the rise. 'It is absolutely because of everything going on in the world that we chose this musical,' says Meltzer. 'Antisemitism is at an all-time high and the access to true Jewish stories becomes muddled by the media… I think that there is a bit of an importance within our Jewish community to identify that and to bring people together in a space of dialogue.' The Jewish faith is predominant throughout the musical — references to certain prayers are made, Yiddish phrases are baked into the dialogue, and many Jewish traditions are brought to life on stage. 'Everyone deserves to tell their own stories,' says actress Shayna Gilberg, who plays Tzeitel. 'Everyone deserves to tell the story of their people and their history. And that's why I think it's really important to put Jewish people in Jewish pieces.' This will be Gilberg's first performance with Zoetic Stage and one that she says holds a special place in her heart. The actress says as a Jewish person herself, it's always been a dream of hers to be in a production of 'Fiddler on the Roof.' 'My whole life, my family has sung the songs of the musical and we've always joked that 'Sunrise, Sunset' is going to be my father-daughter dance at my wedding,' says Gilberg. 'It's not very often, especially being Jewish, that you're actually given the opportunity to play a role that pertains to your heritage,' says the actress. As for her character's story? 'I'm telling the story of a girl who cares deeply about her family and her traditions but also cares about herself as an individual.' Gilberg will be sharing the stage with actor Ben Sandomir, who plays Tevye. Sandomir was in the last musical produced at Zoetic Stage, 'Cabaret' in 2024. The veteran actor is excited to once again grace the intimate stage and step into such an iconic role. For Sandomir, the voice of Tevye has always been the actor Topol, who brought the character to life in the 1971 film version of the musical. 'It's been hard getting Topol's voice out of my head,' reveals the actor. In order to prepare for his version of Tevye, Sandomir says he created a world in his mind. Closing his eyes to envision that reality, he says, 'I went through stories . . . and tried to just see that from a different perspective and to take it in without anything else. I tried to ground myself in the world of a man who's living at that time.' Since the sets are minimal and the 200-seat house is incredibly intimate, it's up to the actors to help build this world for the audience to see, says Sandomir. And the creation of that world starts with the actor before they step foot underneath the spotlight, he emphasizes. 'It's really about the connection with the people,' says Sandomir. 'When you're so close to the audience, there's no hiding the reality of your character. You have to ground that in something in order to be believable.' If you go: WHAT: Zoetic Stage's 'Fiddler on the Roof' WHERE: Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami WHEN: 7:30 p.m. preview, Thursday. Opens Friday. Performances 7:30 p.m., Wednesday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Through April 6. COST: $76, $66. INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 or is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don't miss a story at
Telegraph
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Fiddler on the Roof, London: What to know about the acclaimed musical revival and how to find tickets
What is Fiddler on the Roof about? The 1964 Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, remains incredibly popular with theatre fans due to its combination of a stirring story, potent themes, and an extraordinary klezmer-inflected score featuring songs such as If I Were a Rich Man, Matchmaker, Sunrise, Sunset, and Tradition. Based on a short story by Sholem Aleichem, and featuring a book by Joseph Stein, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, the story centres on a milkman, Tevye, who lives in a village called Anatevka that adheres to Jewish religious and cultural tradition. However, Tevye faces a major challenge to those conventions via his three daughters, who all choose – to his mind – unsuitable husbands. There is a wider political context too. The village is under threat from the Russian tsar (the story is set in 1905), whose forces are menacing the local community in an echo of the real-life pogroms, and there are also clear parallels with the geopolitical tensions of today. Jordan Fein's astonishing revival of the beloved musical was a smash hit at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre last year, and it is now this summer's hot ticket at London's Barbican Centre. How to buy tickets for Fiddler on the Roof You can find seats for the London production of Fiddler on the Roof on Telegraph Tickets. Check the site for the latest prices. The cast Fiddler on the Roof has had some legendary actors leading its cast over the years, including Zero Mostel, Chaim Topol, Alfred Molina and Andy Nyman. Its vivid ensemble storytelling gives great opportunities to multiple actors inhabiting these characters, from parents Tevye and Golde to the three spirited daughters, their suitors, and gossipy local matchmaker Yente. This dynamic revival featured American actor Adam Dannheisser as Tevye alongside Lara Pulver as Golde, Liv Andrusier, Hannah Bristow and Georgia Bruce as their daughters, and Beverley Klein as Yente. It is yet to be confirmed if they will all reprise their roles at the Barbican. Fiddler is directed by Jordan Fein, who previously wowed audiences with his fresh take on musical Oklahoma!. The choreography is by Olivier Award-nominated Julia Cheng, who created the distinctive movement for the West End revival of Cabaret, and the unforgettable design is by Olivier-nominated Tom Scutt. The details Where is Fiddler on the Roof playing? Fiddler on the Roof runs at the Barbican on Silk Street in central London, close to Liverpool Street Station, St Paul's Cathedral and the City of London. What is the running time of Fiddler on the Roof? The running time of Fiddler on the Roof is 2 hours and 40 minutes including an interval. How long is Fiddler on the Roof running for? Fiddler on the Roof is booking to July 19, 2025. What is the minimum age for Fiddler on the Roof? The age recommendation for Fiddler on the Roof is 12+. Does Fiddler on the Roof have accessible tickets? Yes, the show has captioned, BSL and audio-described performances scheduled. Find more information on the theatre website. The review 'This triumphant revival of the classic musical is a masterclass in balancing innovation with tradition… Fein and Fiddler are a match made in heaven.' Read the full Telegraph review. FAQs Will Fiddler on the Roof go on tour? Yes, it will. Following its critically claimed and incredibly popular run at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2024, Fiddler on the Roof is playing at the Barbican in the summer of 2025 for a limited eight-week run and then embarking on a major tour of the UK and Ireland. Is Fiddler on the Roof set in Russia or Ukraine? Fiddler on the Roof is set in the fictional village of Anatevka in 1905. However, the writer of the original stories on which it is based, Sholem Aleichem, had in mind the real-life town of Boyarka near Kyiv in Ukraine. At the time, the town was part of the Russian Empire. Is it appropriate for kids? The official age guidance for Fiddler on the Roof is 12+. It has many elements that younger theatregoers will enjoy: it's a family drama centring on loving but strict parents and rebellious children. However, there is also some darker material concerning violence and prejudice.
