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Sunday, June 27, 2010
Fiddler on the Roof
The only thing I asked for as a special thing for my birthday was to go to Fiddler on the Roof (and a cake, but that hasn’t materialized yet; who knew Giant Eagle didn’t always carry red velvet cakes at the bakery?!). We got tickets in the balcony, which usually seem to be the right balance between nosebleed inducing height and price. When we bought the tickets, the show was part of the farewell tour for Topol. I learned only a week or so before we were to see the show that he was no longer a part of the tour. Initially, I felt misled. How could they just change performers like that? I had really looked forward to seeing him live. I’ve watched the movie more times than I can count. I know every joke, and every second of timing that went into the performance that made it into the finished film. (I watched it almost as often as I watched The Sound of Music when we were living in Canada the summer I turned 13. I’m pretty sure my mom hasn’t watched either of those movies since.) I was disappointed to find out that he was being replaced, even if it was with Harvey Fierstein, who played the role in the most recent Broadway revival. It turns out that the reason Topol was no longer a part of the tour was that he was injured in November and was unable to complete the run. Okay, I can understand that. So I readjusted my thinking and got excited about seeing another person whose career has been interesting and varied, and also a part of my life, although not for quite as long.
The theater was pretty full for a Wednesday night, probably owing to the celebrity draw and the well-known and loved show. The seats are still tiny, but I’m working on becoming tinier so that it’s not quite so much a squeeze. There was a family next to me, and thankfully they were willing to seat their small-ish son in the seat next to me so I didn’t have guilt for being fat and taking up a little more space than a normal sized person. He was too precious during, too, taking in so much of the show as well as the mechanics of it. At one point, he had a conversation with his dad about how it would be a nice place to take someone on a date. I just about melted after hearing that. Yes, little boy. Take someone to the theater on a date. That is a fantastic idea! I didn’t jump into the conversation, but it was very touching.
Harvey Fierstein is an interesting Tevye. He is not Topol, that’s for sure, and his voice… took a little getting used to. The actresses who played Tseitel, Hodel and Chava were very good. They had reasonably strong voices that blended very well together. The acting was pretty strong, which was nice. All in all, what is there to say about Fiddler on the Roof? I love it from start to finish. It’s long, emotional, and entertaining. Harvey Fierstein’s portrayal of Tevye is very interesting in that it is much more loose than I am accustomed to seeing. There was a certain… flair to it that is a bit hard to describe.
Johnathan says he was unable to get past Fierstein’s voice as far as the gravelly sound and really low pitch. That did make him hard to understand on occasion. At least I already knew what the lines were supposed to be! This could usually be a disadvantage, in that I could get bored, but he delivered the lines differently than Topol did in the movie, which made “old” jokes new again. It was, for me, a different version of the same thing, and I loved that. There have been other shows that I’ve seen twice or three times and it has been the same experience each time, because the roles are played in exactly the same way. I think it probably takes a truly good performer to take an established role and perform it in a different way, while still maintaining the core of the character.
I loved the show. It reminded me why I love Broadway and the theater to begin with. I had those thrills of the “curtain” going up, of the orchestra starting and just in general of enjoying a musical. I sometimes forget exactly how much I love going to see shows. It was a wonderful “gift” for my birthday.
As a side note: the spell check in Firefox really doesn’t like anything to do with this show! Lots of red.
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