‘Fiddler’ pulls heart strings at Civic Theatre

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — There was an obvious division in the house on Wednesday night at a performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Civic Theatre downtown.

There were those in the packed audience who never had seen the musical before, and there were those who had seen it in other incarnations since ‘Fiddler’ started taking bows on Broadway in 1964 and as a popular movie in 1971.

You could tell the newcomers because when Tevye (Yehezekiel Lazarov) agreed to give his daughter Tzeitel (Mel Weyn) in marriage to Lazar Wolf (Jonathan Von Mering) there was an audible gasp in the audience.

“Poor Tzeitel,” the newbies must have thought.  “How could Tevye saddle his daughter with that old man?”

Of course, those who knew the play smiled in anticipation of how Tevye would have to make up a scary dream to persuade his wife Golde (Maite Uzal) that Tseitel should marry the tailor Motel (Jesse Weil).

You could tell who in the audience had seen the play before because during the wedding scene when Motel ceremoniously stomped on a glass, they, along with the cast, shouted out a hearty “Mazal Tov!”

I had the pleasure of accompanying my 12-year-old grandson Sky Masori to the play, so there was one who knew the play (me) and one who didn’t.

I delighted in seeing ‘Fiddler’ through his eyes, and answering his whispered questions.  “Who is the czar?” he wanted to know.  I informed him that the czar was the anti-Semitic ruler of Russia at the time.

Perhaps because we in San Diego were so recently reminded with the shooting at the Chabad of Poway where anti-Semitism can lead, members of the audiences — oldtimers and newbies — sat in stunned silence during the scene when the Russian constabulary, complying with an edict, disrupted the wedding, turning tables on their sides and destroying wedding presents.

Israel actor Lazarov played Tevye a bit more comedically than other actors who I’ve seen play the part (Topol, Herschel Bernardi).  It seemed to me that playing for laughs, he sometimes broke the fourth wall between himself and members of the audience, who enjoyed themselves nevertheless.

There were other comedic moments.  At one point Golde remonstrated with a daughter for reading a book, instead of doing her work.  She took the book and looked at it disdainfully, and when the daughter took it back, the daughter turned it from upside down back to its correct position, making the point that Golde didn’t know how to read.

At another juncture, when Golde wanted to announce to Tevye news she had heard from Yenta the matchmaker (Carol Beauregard) that Lazar Wolf wanted to meet with him, Tevye pretended to be too busy praying to listen to his bossy wife.  But his praying was a gobble, gabble type parody.

During the famous “Do You Love Me?” song, the audience laughed uproariously when Golde answered Tevye emphatically, but not at all enthusiastically, shouting, “I’m your WIFE!”

The staging was efficient with music from songs that had been heard previously in the play accompanying set changes.

Unfortunately, this run will not be nearly so long as the 3,000 performances seen on Broadway.  The last performance in San Diego is scheduled June 2.

Very credible performances were turned in by such other cast members as Ruthy Forch (Hodel), Natalie Powers (Chava), Rynne Nardecchia (Perchik), and Joshua Logan Alexander (Fyedka).  If you study the names of the actors and actresses, you will deduce that although this is a play about Jewish life in Czarist Russia, it attracts performers–and audiences–of all nationalities.  Kudos also to Bartlett Sher for his original direction and to Christopher Evans for the choreography.

At intermission, I mentioned to the lady sitting next to me that you can’t go to a Jewish wedding without hearing “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof.   She responded, “Christian weddings too,” and added that there’s a growing trend for the groom to break a glass under his foot, even if he is not Jewish.

*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com