This is Fiddler as London has never seen it before: revamped, refreshed and al fresco. American director Jordan Fein places the stirring 1964 Broadway musical by Joseph Stein (book), Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) about life in a Jewish stetl circa 1905, on an abstract set, where a ski-jump field of wheat seems to have peeled up from the floor and everyone is prey to the elements. His cast, led by Broadway regular Adam Dannheisser as Tevye the milkman and Lara Pulver as his wife Golde, use their own accents.
Most of them have terrific singing voices and those that don’t exude character. It’s a liberating, exuberant and humane production where the great songs – Tradition; If I Were a Rich Man; Sunrise, Sunset – touch you to the core. It also feels sadly contemporary without even trying.
Tevye’s waning, orthodox paternal influence over his five daughters is a sign of the social and political upheaval looming across the world. Three girls make their own choices: of a poor man, a radical, and a non-Jew. Great: but the family story takes place amid pogroms against Jewish communities in a territory under Tsarist Russian control that is today part of Ukraine.
You can’t help but find echoes of Putin’s aggression and the war in Gaza in the wider political frame. Or of recent racist riots across Britain in the “little, unofficial demonstration” that wrecks the wedding of Tevye’s eldest daughter Tzeitel. The day before this show’s opening night, vi.