Several well-known song-and-dance shows – from The Sound of Music, through Jesus Christ Superstar to The Book of Mormon – feature faith. However, no musical is more centrally concerned with religion than Fiddler on the Roof.

Fiddler on the Roof
Playhouse Theatre, London

The Bay at Nice
menier chocolate factory, London

Several well-known song-and-dance shows – from The Sound of Music, through Jesus Christ Superstar to The Book of Mormon – feature faith. However, no musical is more centrally concerned with religion than Fiddler on the Roof.

The cast of Trevor Nunn’s sensational revival of the 1964 Broadway show, deservedly transferred to the West End from the Menier Chocolate Factory, must require a specialist neck physiotherapist, due to the percentage of the three hours’ stage-time in which they deliver songs or dialogue up to the heavens.

A majority of the numbers (music Jerry Bock, lyrics Sheldon Harnick) are explicitly in the form of a prayer. “If I Were a Rich Man”, the economic plan B of Tevye, the poverty-stricken milkman, is famously a Godwards monologue, but the community in the Ukrainian shtetl in 1905 also sings a “Sabbath Prayer”, while Bock and Harnick composed “Sunrise, Sunset”, a sort of psalm on parenthood, for the full Jewish wedding ceremony that tinglingly ends the first half.

Nunn’s unusual equal success as a director of Shakespeare and Lloyd Webber comes from seeking the deepest truths in texts, irrespective of genre. His Fiddler on the Roof is typically informed by precise social and physical detail, whether when competitive Jewish and Cossack dancing in a tavern becomes a prophetic proxy of violence, or when Andy Nyman’s magnificent Tevye visibly stoops and flinches from the impact of physical labour.

Get Instant Access

Continue Reading

Register for free to read this article in full

REGISTER

Subscribe for unlimited access

SUBSCRIBE NOW

From just £37.50 quarterly

  Print copy of The Tablet delivered directly to your door.
  Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
  Access to the weekly digital copy of The Tablet.
  Full access to The Tablet’s archive – over 180 years of back issues.

Already a subscriber? Login