October 15, 2018
The first of these two by way of post-mortem: I wish I had been as big a fan of the much extended, much praised Tevye Served Raw, at the Playroom Theater, as so many others clearly were. But I’m glad to have been outvoted, so that I can offer this mildly dissenting opinion without feeling as if I might do its future life, in this staging or others, any harm. It featured three incredibly gifted performers who are also the creators—Yelena Shmulenson, Allen Lewis Rickman and Shane Baker—delivering stories and sketches of Sholem Aleichem, with a concentration on some colors not previously offered up in Fiddler on the Roof. On the plus/interesting side: Tevye’s still a distinctive character, but in the stories, not larger than life, closer to a recognizable archetype of a specific community; and the non-Tevye stories have a mild, yet bracing edge; they’re not quite so sentimental. On the flip side, there are several lengthy passages in which original Yiddish text in its entirety alternates with English translation in its entirety. The device, a good one, would have benefitted from tightening, overlap, and cross-play to keep things surprising…but Tevye Served Raw doggedly persisted in its unabridged, relentlessly schematic back-and-forth, which caused pace to drag in a number of sections. I hasten to add, I speak as a “member of the tribe”; all points of cultural recognition resonated. But for me, the recognition wasn’t quite enough, once we were out of the starting gate.
And still current: Ironically, what you might well consider Tevye twice removed is much more effective, that being the Yiddish-language production of Fiddler on the Roof, as presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage way downtown, featuring a cast of Equity leads (some of whom any regular NYC theatregoer would recognize) and non-Equity chorus, directed by Joel Grey—himself a childhood veteran of NYC Yiddish Theatre, his father having been Yiddish star Mickey Katz. The “double removal,” as I mean it, has to do, first removal, with the musical being an adaptation of elements from various Aleichem Tevye stories to form a cohesive whole build around the theme of tradition; and second removal, with the text by Sta_ Kmie_ being a language adaptation (i.e. colloquial and idiomatic rather than literal) of the English book by Joseph Stein and the English lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Where this becomes evident, fascinating and at times inevitably distracting is in the projected supertitles (which are in English and in Russian) that display not the original English text, but a literal translation of the Yiddish adaptation(The music of Jerry Bock, of course, needs no translation, and is given sprightly, Broadway-grade zest by the cast and musical director Zalmen Mlotek. However, Don Walker’s classic orchestrations have been adapted, with no loss of punch, for a somewhat smaller orchestra by Larry Blank.)
All this said, there’s nothing particularly, interpretively unique about this Fiddler, not in terms of tone, pace, aesthetic. Mr. Grey’s staging and direction are straight ahead and clan: He doesn’t get in the way of the show, and the show emerges unblemished and as expected. Physically the production is a bit notable. Since Broadway extravagance would be out of the question in this environment, Mr. Grey has taken a page from the John Doyle playbook, letting the actors create houses, rooms, large props (like a bed) and various locales in the town of Anatevka from nothing but simple tables and simple chairs. What’s quite admirable about this device is how little attention is drawn to it. There’s never a wink of Look, look, it’s all chairs standing in for real stuff! This too is matter-of-fact and straight-ahead, so much so that you barely notice, and never in the forefront of your mind, how budget-minded the production truly is. This is not only a nicely moving Fiddler…it’s a triumph of subtle expedience.
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