Review
Fiddler on the Roof "When a poor man eats a chicken one of them is sick," Tevye, the everyman hero milkman of Fiddler on the Roof, spends a lot of his time talking to God, "With your help I'm starving to death." Even if it weren't for the great songs such kooky attitudes alone are worth going to see this revived sixties musical for. There was not a Cat or an Abba cover version in sight. You could happily forget both the eighties and the nineties, beguiled instead by a sixties chutzpah which seemed very close to home. Just think of endangered milkfloats, long hours, thin wage packets, soaring rents, post-modernism, Sean Connery and Sting's dad. Edwin Hawkes as Tevye and Laura Solomons as Golde are very strong leads in this fabulous production. They make a totally convincing Jewish mama and papa trying to hold onto their traditions and wayward daughters. "Do You Love Me?" Tevye tenderly sings to his wife after 25 years of marriage. Which is probably the musical's most revolutionary question. And Golde's answer - that she has spent 25 years cooking, cleaning and bringing up his children, but of course she does - is the radical reply. All the daughters and sons are played with gusto too, but their new kinds of love threaten the status quo. One pledges herself to the poor tailor without her father's permission. One gets engaged to a stranger and a revolutionary; and one breaks the ultimate taboo - she runs away and secretly marries a Christian. Tevye forgives all but the last, forlornly fighting love without seeing the real danger. Hatred and violence engulf the community and they are forced to leave their beloved village of Anatevka. The moving melancholy songs "Sunrise, Sunset", "Anatevka", "Sabbath Prayer" all worked wonderfully. The cast sang as if they meant every word. The more comic, catchy numbers like "Matchmaker", "If I Were a Rich Man" and my favourite "The Dream" lightened the tone, as did the drunken dancing and great screaming from the balcony. Even if all the jokes weren't intentional the mishaps of the opening night (collapsing bed, falling bottles, candles that didn't light) only added to the fun. I'd definitely go again. It's a charming, sentimental night out. And you're bound to come home humming, "Mazel tov, Mazel tov." Aruna Wittmann
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