I’m not generally a huge fan of Broadway style musicals though when they have more than average dramatic and musical depth I can be up for it. Cabaret and Candide are favourites for example; combining fairly sophisticated music with social content. I’m also, as regular readers may have noticed, intrigued by Yiddish music and Yiddish culture generally. So, I was really quite intrigued to experience Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish which opened at the Elgin Theatre on Thursday evening.

It’s much more politically and socially complex than I realised. Set in a shtetl in Russia (as then was) in 1905 (I’m guessing from various clues that it’s somewhere in Galicia) it deals with issues of social change and ethnic/political persecution (ethnic cleansing really and how relevant is that today!) in the context of a small community that’s experienced little change for a long time. But this is Russia in 1905. The Tsar’s government is on the ropes and reacts as dictators always do with a mixture of domestic persecution (ethnic and political) and a disastrous foreign war (sound familiar?).

The foreign war doesn’t feature in Fiddler on the Roof but the other two elements do as a young man from Kyiv (Social Democrat, SR?, we don’t know but likely the latter) brings progressive/revolutionary ideas to Anatevke with far reaching consequences; principally by challenging the patriarchy’s control over who young people can/must marry. It raises all kinds of issues about social stability, inter-generational relationships and endogamy and it doesn’t provide comfortable, pat answers.

But it’s also tremendous fun. The book is often very funny even (perhaps especially) where it leans on stock Jewish joke stereotypes and the music is lively with a distinct klezmer element. Being in Yiddish just makes it feel both more natural and, frankly, funnier. Dance is really well incorporated and there are some seriously good dancers in the cast. It’s got a very atmospheric lighting plot which creates multiple moods out of a very simple (but effective) set. The tension between the amusing domestic antics and the underlying political threat is unrelenting, even when things get surreal like in the Act 1 dream sequence. I can see why Joel Grey wanted to direct this. One could write a whole essay on parallels between this production and Cabaret.

There are some terrific performances too. Steven Skybell gets it just right as the main protagonist Tevye and is beautifully complimented by Tracy Michalaidis as his long suffering wife. The successive pairs of young lovers each bring a an extra element to the drama from the simple love match of Motl Kamzoyl (Joshua Kiliminik) and Tsaytl (Isidora Kecman) to the political idealism of Pertshik (Sayer Roberts) and Hodl (Emma Burke-Kleinman) to the truly transgressive inter-racial marriage of Fyedke (Nick Boegel) and Khave (Alice Malakhov). The large supporting cast is also very good and constantly lurking is Der Fidler (Connor J. Lucas) who Grey uses really effectively to reinforce the fragility of what’s going on.

There’s a twelve piece band, conducted by Mark Camilleri, half hidden at the back of the set and they are tremendously effective and whoever did the sound engineering did a terrific job as everything was completely audible from my seat in one of the Elgin’s notorious dead spots.

This is a really good show and the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company are to be congratulated on staging such an ambitious show so effectively. For aficionados of the classic musical it’s a must see but there’s also loads there for those who aren’t necessarily hard core musical theatre types. Fiddler of the Roof In Yiddish; book by Joseph Stein, lyrics and music by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, translation by Shraga Friedman, runs at the Elgin Theatre until June 7th.

Photo credit: Dahlia Katz