Review: Fiddler on the Roof by Austin Opera
by Michael Meigs

It’s a sweeping, beautifully produced and beautifully sung work, done before packed houses at Austin Long Center’s Dell Hall. Most of the leads in Austin Opera’s Fiddler on the Roof have lengthy national and international resumes, so of course the quality of the acting and song is superb. For example, Steven Skybell, as Tevye, was recognized with a 2019 Lortel Award for performing the same role in Yiddish, directed by Joel Grey, and he was Tevye in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of a version originated by Berlin’s Komische Opera.

 

A particular delight for knowledgeable Austin theatre buffs is the fact that key supporting roles are delivered by revered local talent. Spouses Robert Faires and Barbara Chisholm fit beautifully into the production, Chisholm as the brash matchmaker Yente and Faires as the bushy-bearded Lazer Wolf, the butcher disappointed when his proposal of marriage to the eldest of Levy’s five daughters is refused. Faires goes one-on-one with master performer Skybell, both in song and in wrangling, and holds his own in an impressive contest.

 

Seeing Rabbi Neil Blumofe in the role of (who else?) Anatevka’s rabbi was amusing and appreciated, especially for his service as a consultant to maintain authenticity (for example, the quiet dignity of shabbas meals all across the stage, visitors’ consistent, reverential touches of the mezuzahs on doorframes, Blumofe shouldering the Torah scrolls for the trek into exile).

 

Shalom Austin provided rehearsal space for the production, since AO’s Butler Performance Center won’t open until October.

 

 

This is a huge commemorative staging. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson appeared with Burridge before the curtain to read a proclamation marking the company's 40th anniversary. AO CEO Annie Burridge told the packed house in her curtain speech that the production involved almost 200 persons. That includes the orchestra of more than forty musicians, who filled Dell Hall with cinematic surround sound. Sound design by David Bullard and audio design by Bill Master assured that not a syllable or a note was lost. Stage director Crystal Manich and choreographer Michael Pappalardo, imports to Austin both of them, kept the stage picture and the well-populated village endlessly interesting. The full audience was enthusiastic throughout.

 

And who doen't know Fiddler on the Roof? It debuted in New York in 1964, an appealing musical assemblage of elements from Sholem Aleichem's stories in Yiddish about Tevye the milkman set in Czarist Russia. The catchy lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and memorable, singable tunes by Jerry Bock caught the American imagination. Joseph Stein’s book lightened the miseries of shtetl existence to provide a more hopeful ending than that in Aleichem’s tales. In the closing moments of this production, the trudging villagers of Anatevka wind around the playing space, then turn upstage to progress toward a brilliantly lit area at deep center symbolizing new life.

 

Fiddler on the Roof was a huge success. The 1971 film with Zero Mostel implanted it deep in U.S. culture. It has been produced across the globe (I attended a staging in Quito, Ecuador in the early 1980’s). CTXLiveTheatre records ten productions of it across Central Texas since 2014 and additional ones are scheduled for later this year in Corsicana and Kerrville.

 

 

Austin Opera leadership's choice of a popular U.S. musical comedy gives an observer food for thought. In connection with the 2014 rebranding from title “Austin Lyric Opera,” Austin Opera has worked assiduously and successfully to develop a younger clientele, an aim certainly served by this choice. On January 15 AO’s well-furnished and entertaining Facebook page featured a brief video (https://tinyurl.com/2hj5e58r) of UT’s Dr. Charles D. Carson explaining opera companies’ interest in producing contemporary entertainments.  

 

AO’s initial  2025-2026 season announcement a year ago offered fewer major productions and promised Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel in this spot. No mention was made of the decision to substitute Fiddler, leaving one free to speculate. The 1945 Carousel is certainly a classic, but we’re all aware that standards of social acceptance have changed since those almost vanished days. Carousel contains nasty plot elements including abuse of women, robbery, and suicide, as well as an oddball return from the dead to correct mistakes (probably wish fulfillment following a world war, but today little more than weird fantasy). While Fiddler on the Roof, with clear though attenuated depictions of persecution, exile, asylum, the rights of women, and community solidarity is as contemporary as it could possibly be.

 

Finally, one quibble. The image used for posters, promotion, and the playbill is dramatic but incongruent with the concept of this Fiddler on the Roof. The use of disturbing yellows and oranges dominating the horizon evokes the Holocaust, of which there’s not a whisper in the staging. The figure of the fiddler, shown in profile, leaning back to stare at the sky, seems to warn of that catastrophe. No one can deny the horror of that unimaginable disaster inflicted upon the Jewish people; but if the joys of Fiddler on the Roof had been less well known, this image would have dissuaded some prospective attendees from buying tickets.

 

EXTRA

Austin Opera video extracts (Facebook)

 

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Fiddler on the Roof
by Bock, Harnick and Stein
Austin Opera

February 5 - 8, 2025

Thursday - Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m.

Dell Hall, Long Center, Austin

Tickets are now on sale at www.austinopera.org or by calling Patron Services at 512-472-5992.