Fiddler On The Roof

When the latest Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof opened in 2004, it was enough easy to take a pass. Already well exposed to the musical, I found little in the lukewarm reviews for director David Leveaux's revised take or Alfred Molina's performance as Tevye to change my mind. But by the following year, Harvey Fierstein had taken over the starring role, and I saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Turns out it was a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

When Topol told the producers that he couldn't continue what was to be his farewell tour as Tevye, the producers turned to Fierstein as a quick and saleable replacement. The always-out star of Hairspray and Torch Song Trilogy is apparently now the go-to guy for Tevye, and at the Golden Gate Theatre, he again proves his mettle in the shtetl.

Tevye is very much the engine that runs the 1964 musical, and when you have a big, luscious, and, yes, idiosyncratic performance like Fierstein's, you easily accept the more ordinary moments in what is otherwise still a brilliant piece of musical theater. For my kopeks, the ordinary moments are a bit more plentiful in this touring production, which, unlike Leveaux's Broadway revival, wants to replicate as much as possible the look of the Broadway original. Not that this is such a bad thing, obviously, but dust gathers even on masterpieces.

Sammy Dallas Bayes, a member of the original 1964 cast, is overseeing this revival, as he has done for many previous Fiddler productions. While it's easy to still see the genius in Jerome Robbins' recreated choreography, the dancing is not always as vital as it could be, and the overall production has an old-shoe quality. Susan Cella is memorably caustic as Tevye's wife Golde, and there are a couple of other high-quality performances, but the featured roles are unevenly cast.

And then there's Fierstein, who may be channeling more of Zero Mostel than any other of the late performer's high-profile successors. Fierstein can take a seemingly innocuous line, as simple as "Who is it?", and stretch it into a big laugh. As well as he knows his way around a comic situation, he also connects with the pathos in Joseph Stein's book, adapted from Sholom Aleichem's stories about Jewish life in pre-revolutionary Russia. As for his singing of the Sheldon Harnick-Jerry Bock score, well, you know going in that you're not going to get a mellifluous tenor. Then again, "Sunrise, Sunset" can stand a little gravel.