But no hook is needed to bring this inspired production to London’s bucolic park venue, in which it seems both reimagined and a perfect fit.
In the programme, director Jordan Fein describes Fiddler as “the definition of musical theatre,” adding, “it’s the first show I ever saw”. My guess is the creators Sheldon Harnick (lyrics), Jerry Bock (music) and Joseph Stein (book) would thrill to see how their 1964 musical recreation of precarious Jewish life and love in the Pale of Settlement plays in Regent’s Park.
The scene opens with the eponymous Fiddler (Raphael Papa) playing in a sloping wheat-field (ingeniously created by designer Tom Scutt), which soars above the stage so that it also serves as the cottage roof for the performers below.
Beneath the slope, Tevye, played by Adam Dannheisser as empathetic, confiding and confident, arrives dragging his cart of milk churns. The shtetl dwellers fill the stage, and despite the poverty of their worn garments, there is joie de vivre in their portrait of generations of village life as the ensemble join in a joyous rendition of ‘Tradition’.
But both love and hate are destined to interrupt the cycle.
The main story revolves around Tevye’s attempt to marry off his three eldest daughters. As tradition dictates, their grooms will be chosen by Tevye, his wife Golde (Lara Pulver) and Yente the Matchmaker (Beverley Klein) – but his daughters have other ideas. His eldest, headstrong Tzeitel (Liv Andusier) rebels against her arranged marriage to the wealthy old widower Lazar the butcher (Michael S Siegel), and ends up marrying her childhood sweetheart, the ambitious tailor Motel (Dan Wolff). Hodel (Georgia Bruce) falls for the revolutionary Perchik (Daniel Kriker), eventually following him back to Kyiv and an uncertain future, while Chava (Hannah Bristow), is disowned by her father when she decides to marry Fyedka (Gregor Milne), a Christian youth.
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