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"Fiddler on the Roof," Part II

People wondered if Harvey Fierstein could really play Tevye. Fierstein himself wasn't skeptical: "I just played an overweight housewife from Baltimore, in HAIRSPRAY. Tevye is much closer to me."

Critics were kind to Fierstein; they weren't kind, in any way, to his co-star, Rosie O'Donnell (stunt casting). There seems to be a consensus that Alfred Molina had been too "small" in the role of Tevye, and Harvey rescued the revival, or half-rescued it.

Frank Rich said that "Fiddler" endures not because of light, cute numbers, but because of the monumental "Tradition" and the chills-inducing "Anatevka." Curiously, "Anatevka" was, at first, a comic number; someone had the idea, late in the day, to slow things down and make "Anatevka" mournful and linked to exile.

Everyone comes from a family, and nearly everyone builds a family in his own time. The erosion of tradition really is universal. My husband and I are watching the network drama "Parenthood" at the same time as I'm reading about "Fiddler," and it's as if Lauren Graham were taking notes directly from Aleichem. A grandfather has one idea about how to address a small boy on "the spectrum"; a young man has a different idea. A mother--furious at her self-absorbed adolescent daughter--needs to hear from her *own* mother that this teenager behavior isn't new. ("I don't remember growing older.....When did they?")

I especially like how "precariousness" works its way into the "Fiddler" story. You see this in the opening speech...."A fiddler on the roof....trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck....." You see it again in the bottle dance; the teetering bottles become metaphors for Tevye himself, struggling to "find legs." (Jerome Robbins really was a genius. A bottle could fall at any moment, on the Broadway stage, creating an unusual thrill with such simple, simple materials.)

We're not in a "Fiddler" revival year. We're in a "West Side Story" year--and, predictably, there's a piece in the Times calling for the "cancellation" of WSS. (This happens with "Fiddler," as well. "It's shtetl kitsch!" "It's shtetl shtick!")

Well: Sunrise...sunset....swiftly....through the years.....
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