Raising the roof! Safe and starry opening of Fiddler in Regent’s Park

Dame Arlene Phillips was discussing the finer points of Israeli dancing with a young performer. Lesley Joseph (fresh out of Sister Act) dipped into the programme, David Tennant dipped his cap and while Nick Ferrari sipped champagne with Jeremy Vine, theatre producer Kenny Wax now an MBE, waved at those he knows in other rows. Starry and electric with not a single empty seat, the opening of Jordan Fein’s Fiddler on the Roof at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre was always going to be a big night.

When and wherever the beloved Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick musical opens, a Jewish audience can be relied on for ticket sales. But when it was announced as part of the theatre’s summer season, we – the community – not only wanted to see it,  we had to support it. To be wrapped in the comfort it provides and to feel reassured, however briefly that this story about our people matters in these interminable dark times.

That Jordan Fein would bring his heart to this production, there was no doubt. Fiddler was the first show he ever saw – “I was seven or eight and I was mesmerised” – and Sholem Aleichem’s story about milkman Tevye and his family being forced to leave Anatevka was a similar experience for  Fein’s great-grandparents  who immigrated from Kiev to America in 1910.

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Bringing his own Jewish history to his interpretation of the show made it deeply personal – the icing on the lokshen pudding so to speak – and the result is an emotional (but not too much) sweet (but not sickly) and modern (yet draped in tradition)  production that hits all the right notes by staying familiar with only the occasional curve ball to make it interesting.

One such curve ball is a kiss. Since the show was first performed in 1964 we have never seen any of Tevye’s daughters make more than a pledge to their suitors but here Fein emboldens Hodel(Georgia Bruce) and she gets to make a move. Unsettling for the modest perhaps, it is joyous and fortunately out of Tevye’s eyeshot. To the role of Tevye, Broadway star Adam Dannheisser brings a compelling mix of quiet dignity and the occasional cheeky expression while exuding reliability and reason.

This is a tough role for any actor as comparisons are always drawn with the late Chaim Topol who set the bar ludicrously high with his portrayal of Tevye in the 1971 film. But there are moments in Dannheisser’s performance when he conjures up Topol with a look and it will make you cry. There are more tears when Topol’s granddaughter Darya Topol-Margalith comes on stage as youngest daughter Schprintze as the legacy comes full circle. Losing her grandmother, Galia Topol just days before the opening wasn’t easy for the young performer and with her mother Adi in Israel for the funeral, only her father Dror Margalith was in the audience for her stage debut.

The Anatevka set by Tom Scutt is ingenious and beautiful as he has managed to create a wheat field along a ramp that disappears into the trees. Making their entrances in this Millet-inspired setting with Motel (Dan Wolff) impressively doing so on a bike, it also serves as a place for Raphael Papo’s fiddler to hide and for Hannah Bristow as Chava to play clarinet poignantly as she stands on the edge of sorrow.

Symbolic in so many ways the field is such a clever touch and there are others such as in Tevye’s dream when the villagers and many bedsheets appear in a Fosse style tableau set along a table which doubles as a bed for Tevye and Golde and at the far end departed Grandma Tzeitel. The interesting twist here is that Tzeitel (Liv Andrusier) is in kahoots with her father and the faux nightmare, though any more detail will spoil the impact of what may be considered a gruesome prop in the light of October 7 brutality.

Julia Cheng’s pulsing choreography is very detailed and so entertaining and as the company boasts the footwork talents of Greg Bernstein(Mendel, the rabbi’s son) this was to be expected. Most would happily have sat through the ‘Bottle Dance’ twice and they really should consider a reprise in the wheatfield some time before the end of the run.

The night before the show opened a Pro Palestinian contingent with flags gathered at the café next door the theatre. Small in number their presence was a reminder that Fiddler being at the Open Air at all is, as Motel sings a ‘Miracle of Miracles’ but why we should feel grateful is the bitter pill.

The musical has always been a precious gift and Jordan Fein has underlined this fact with a production that everyone should see and some on a need to know basis if they are struggling to accept that Jews have always been persecuted and forced out of their homelands. Tragically it has been the Tradition for us.

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