Fiddler on the Roof review, Menier Chocolate Factory: the tears ring true in Trevor Nunn's exuberant revival
All Fiddlers great and small, whether at the London Palladium or in a space not much bigger than a parking-lot, know that they can’t really top Topol.
Yes, it was the legendary Zero Mostel who created the lead role of Tevye the dairy-man, when Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick turned Sholem Aleichem’s tales of Jewish shtetl life into a Broadway smash in 1964. But it was Chaim Topol who made the role his own, on both the big-screen and the West End stage (for yonks). Since then, Henry Goodman and the comedian Omid Djalili have played Tevye with terrific verve, but neither had that barrel-chested, peasant-stock immensity that was Topol’s forte.
Now, it’s the turn of actor Andy Nyman, often a presence behind the scenes (he lends his skills as magician, writer and director to Derren Brown’s shows), to step into the boots of this religious-minded rustic, in a fine revival by Trevor Nunn at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Perhaps my ears were playing tricks, but early impressions were that his accent makes the fictional Russian town of Anatevka sound not a million miles from modern-day Archway. But if Nyman doesn’t always sound the part, he looks it: a little youthful, granted, but with his big beard, labourer’s fore-arms and stout physique, he plausibly incarnates the fretful patriarch.
Tevye’s comic earthiness, with consulting glances and offered hands to God, as well as tacit submission to his wife Golde (a likeably formidable Judy Kuhn) is enjoyably rendered. The “daidle, deedle, daidles” in If I Were a Rich Man are delivered with rare frailty, as if giving voice to back-pain spasms. But as one daughter after another peels away, marrying for reasons of the heart and breaking with hallowed, rigid ‘tradition’, Nyman wrings out the full measure of mounting anguish and the tears ring true.
And bustling truthfulness – or at least a rough shtetl authenticity – is what Nunn’s production is after. Robert Jones’s set presents a Chagallian cluster of slant-roofed wooden houses and over-hanging lanterns. Musicians wander past. All it needs is a chicken or two to complete the picture.
Meanwhile, you can almost smell the concentration of the male wedding-guests as they strain to keep bottles balanced on their hats, while executing original choreographer Jerome Robbins’s leg-splaying contortions. In the arm-linked, whirling exuberance elsewhere, you’re inside a world that the barbarous 20th century swept aside.
Despite its rather rudimentary story-line, the show remains as fresh as ever. Folk songs that were the product of affectionate pastiche – the creative trio’s homage to ‘where poppa came from’ – have such a core veracity, it’s almost as if they were actually sung back in the day.
Nunn doesn’t overplay the obvious grim pertinence of a tale in which ugly anti-Semitism smoulders and a population is sent packing overseas. In fact – wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles – the director of Les Mis, and who has been known to let things drag, keeps it nicely brisk. Perfect for this time of year.
Until Mar 9. Tickets: 020 7378 1713; menierchocolatefactory.com
