{"id":365873,"date":"2025-08-22T23:50:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T23:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/365873\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T23:50:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T23:50:16","slug":"the-timeless-relevance-of-fiddler-on-the-roof-ahead-of-its-liverpool-empire-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/365873\/","title":{"rendered":"The timeless relevance of Fiddler on the Roof ahead of its Liverpool Empire run"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\tLondon theatre writer for The New York Times Matt Wolf on the timeless topicality of Fiddler on the Roof ahead of its arrival at the Liverpool Empire next month\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may think you know Fiddler on the Roof, the iconic 1964 musical that spawned the beloved 1971 film, starring Topol as the beleaguered milkmen Tevye, and that gets revived regularly on the London and Broadway stage.<\/p>\n

Direct from a completely sold-out season at London\u2019s Barbican Theatre the production now touring the country stands apart, whether you\u2019re coming to the material for the first time or you already recognise the story of a Jewish community seeking refuge from the fearsome pogroms of Czarist Russia in 1905. (The show\u2019s source are various short stories from the Yiddish playwright-author Sholem Aleichem).<\/p>\n

As directed by the expatriate American Jordan Fein, the production was first produced at Regent\u2019s Park Open Air Theatre, garnering 13 Olivier nominations in April and winning three, including best musical revival. Told with unusual intensity of feeling and a revelatory attention to detail, the show felt that much deeper and richer when it transferred indoors to the Barbican Centre in London this past summer. That same staging, partially recast, is now touring the UK and Ireland through 3 January, 2026, much to the delight of its four principal performers, each of whom spoke with great eloquence about the task at hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis feels freshly minted,\u201d Matthew Woodyatt, who has the leading role of Tevye, was saying in one of a sequence of interviews one recent afternoon. What the creatives Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein created over 60 years ago endures: they\u2019ve created \u201csuch a masterpiece,\u201d says Woodyatt, \u201cthat everything you need is there \u2013 it\u2019s all so strong and clear.\u201d Within its structure is room for the individual to shine, which in Woodyatt\u2019s case has meant bringing his own Welsh accent to the part and not having to mimic those who came before him, who famously include the vaunted Broadway funnyman, Zero Mostel, who originated the role onstage.<\/p>\n

Tevye, says Woodyatt, \u201cis such a glorious role. He contains multitudes, really \u2013 anger and love and wit and silliness.\u201d You note his struggle to hold together a family threatened by fragmentation, alongside his ongoing conversation with God, not to mention such knockout numbers as \u201cIf I Were A Rich Man\u201d and the show\u2019s thrilling opening, \u201cTradition\u201d. \u201cTevye\u2019s relationship with God is directed outfront to the audience, which gives you a window to his soul. I would say I feel an elated exhaustion by the end\u201d \u2013 he had been playing Tevye once a week at the Barbican, whilst otherwise appearing in the ensemble as the innkeeper Mordcha \u2013 \u201cand I find it very energising, even though it\u2019s a huge physical role.\u201d As Mordcha, his job \u201cwas to serve the other people around me\u201d; now, as Tevye, it\u2019s to drive the show.<\/p>\n

Woodyatt first came across the musical as a child growing up in the Welsh valleys. \u201cOne of the first things I went to see when I was 9 or 10 years old was Fiddler at our local theatre, and I think the husband of my infant school headmistress was playing Tevye.\u201d He saw the film, of course, and later experienced the show \u201cfrom the inside, really\u201d as a company member of the 2017 Chichester production, directed by Daniel Evans, in which Woodyatt understudied Omid Djalili as Tevye but never went on in the part.<\/p>\n

There may be an advantage, he notes, to the show being performed in Britain well away from the Borscht Belt Jewish humour roots that have always been part of its appeal on Broadway. \u201cThat bold-stroke Catskills comedy\u201d \u2013 the region of New York state where the Borscht Belt is located \u2013 \u201cisn\u2019t as innate and well-known here, so it gives the director and the cast the freedom to get into the material potentially more.\u201d At the same time, the direct-address nature of Tevye, performed as here in the actor\u2019s own accent, ramps up the intimacy, even in a large auditorium. \u201cYou never feel you\u2019re watching a costume drama; there\u2019s an immediacy to these conversations, as if they were happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The production\u2019s Golde, Tevye\u2019s ever-patient wife, is new to the touring cast, though the performer Jodie Jacobs had seen and greatly admired Fein\u2019s staging before signing on to replace Lara Pulver in the role. \u201cWhen I was younger,\u201d Jacobs says candidly, \u201cI might have felt Fiddler was perhaps a little dull, but I wasn\u2019t as engaged politically then as I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s changed? Her awareness, she says, of \u201cthe resilience and the power\u201d of the show, alongside a sense that it allows her to inhabit \u201ca space where you can be unashamedly proud of your faith and your community\u201d. Born into a family of Dutch and Russian Jews, Jacobs laughs as she recalls \u201ca case of terrible FOMO in the audition room\u201d that came with a newfound appreciation for the material. \u201cGolde\u2019s very clear-cut, practical, pragmatic: if motherhood were a business, she\u2019d be the CEO.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverley Klein, the production\u2019s Olivier-nominated Yente, had worked with Fein, the director, on the ongoing West End revival of Cabaret before taking the decision to join a show she knows so well, having twice previously appeared as Golde.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think this is a piece of genius,\u201d she says of Fiddler, in which her gossipmongering matchmaker gains many of the show\u2019s laughs. \u201cThe juxtaposition between serious matter and the musical form is balanced in such an incredible way, and there\u2019s not a wasted line. [Joseph Stein\u2019s] book is as good as it gets.\u201d Early in her career, she played the Innkeeper\u2019s wife in a touring Fiddler, starring Alfred Marks. \u201cI\u2019ve been working for 45 years and seem to have done a different Fiddler once every decade. Now I\u2019ve dwindled into Yente but I don\u2019t feel it\u2019s a dwindling. If you don\u2019t want to work with Jordan Fein, there\u2019s something wrong with you; this feels like bliss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the staging\u2019s greatest innovation is its use of the fiddler of the title. As reconceived for this production, he\u2019s no longer a decorative element of the story but, instead, a sort of shadow-self to Tevye. The character here appears regularly throughout, which in turn allowed the Anglo-Israeli violinist Raphael Papo to get his own Olivier nod for the role \u2013 a banner achievement for a non-speaking part.<\/p>\n

The idea this time out, recalls Papo, \u201cwasn\u2019t about, let\u2019s put a violinist onstage and get him to play pretty tunes, but, actually, why am I playing at which moments and what am I trying to say with what I\u2019m playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This fiddler, in Papo\u2019s assessment, is \u201can extension of Tevye\u2019s emotions, who can sort of reflect things back at Tevye that can\u2019t be put into words. Every time Tevye is talking to God, the fiddler is there listening. In performance, I\u2019m trying to sound like [the musical equivalent of] a human voice, not like some nice violinist\u201d. The result is soul-searingly moving.<\/p>\n

What of the onward resonance of the piece? Matthew Woodyatt is sure that \u201c50-60 years from now, Fiddler will remain every bit as topical\u00a0 as it is now\u201d: its themes are at once timeless and universal. Says Raphael Papo: \u201cThis is a show about love, it really is \u2013 about family and love and a shared humanity. I can\u2019t think of any better way of putting it than that.\u201d Fiddler belongs to the past and the present and, no doubt, the future, too.<\/p>\n

Fiddler on the Roof\u00a0is at the Liverpool Empire from 23-27 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London theatre writer for The New York Times Matt Wolf on the timeless topicality of Fiddler on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,128185,4884,179,128186,2764,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-365873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-fiddler-on-roof","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-liverpool","13":"tag-liverpool-empire","14":"tag-theatre","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115075103711859695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}