{"id":414413,"date":"2025-09-11T00:02:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/414413\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T00:02:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:02:41","slug":"fiddler-on-the-roof-proves-as-poignant-as-ever-in-edinburgh-seen-and-heard-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/414413\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiddler on the Roof proves as poignant as ever in Edinburgh \u2013 Seen and Heard International"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UnitedUnited Kingdom Joseph Stein and Jerry Bock, Fiddler on the Roof: <\/strong>Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 9.9.2025. (SRT)<\/p>\n

\"\"Raphael Papo (The Fiddler) and Matthew Woodyatt (Tevye) \u00a9 Johan Persson<\/p>\n

Before it moved to its sell-out run in London\u2019s Barbican, Jordan Fein\u2019s production of Fiddler on the Roof opened at the Regent\u2019s Park\u2019s Open Air Theatre. Now as it plays indoors in Edinburgh, you still get a sense of that outdoors through Tom Scutt\u2019s designs, which surround the action with fields of wheat from which the ensemble emerges as a unit at the start of Act I. The wheat also covers a ceiling which rises and falls at different parts of the action, serving as the canopy for the first act wedding scene, as well as acting as a stage for characters who interact with the community, like the enigmatic eponymous \u2018Fiddler\u2019 or, later, the daughter who has been cast out for marrying a Russian.<\/p>\n

All of this grounds the community of Anatevka firmly in its land, making them one with the environment and making their final exile all the more poignant. It also grants an earthiness to the action, as characters\u2019 entrances and exits weave in and out of the stalks, and the small orchestra plays at the back of the stage amidst the wheat field. It is a lovely setting for Joseph Stein and Jerry Bock\u2019s musical to play out, with its themes of changing traditions and its meditation on the place of minorities in the world, a theme that sadly is as poignant as ever today.<\/p>\n

Yet something felt missing, something slightly lacking. The performances were capable, and often much more than that, yet I sensed myself being kept at a distance as much as I was drawn in. With a musical set so clearly in a specific time and place (the Ukrainian shtetl in 1905) a decision needs to be taken about how far the actors inhabit their characters and, when it comes to accents, how far do they do a Yiddish impression? The correct answer, surely, is that either everybody does it or nobody does it, but this company chose an awkward halfway house where some did and some didn\u2019t. That sounds like it should be a small thing but, in reality, the switch of accents between characters drew me out of the action and into the artificiality of the situation. Several of the characters, most often the minor ones, did passable Yiddish accents that could pass off as a certain fantasy shtetl chic, but some didn\u2019t even try, like Golde, the daughters, or the constable. It didn\u2019t help that Matthew Woodyatt\u2019s Tevye was obviously Welsh, nor that Gregor Milne\u2019s Scottish accent kept trying to burst through his Russian one as Fyedka. It also took a while for the tech team to find the right sound balance, making the first ten minutes or so a bit of a boom and, therefore, a strain on the ear.<\/p>\n

Yet when this musical gets into its stride there isn\u2019t much that can beat it. Sunrise, Sunset had me welling up, its meditation on the passing of time moving me far more than the final eviction. Regardless of what accent they were singing in; Woodyatt and Jodie Jacobs tugged the heart in Do You Love Me? and Woodyatt acted Tevye with swagger and chutzpah that reinforced his status as an everyman. The crowd scenes were a riot, particularly they wedding scene, where it was impossible to avoid tapping your foot, and the love scenes for each of Tevye\u2019s daughters carried their own variety of poignancy. The small orchestra could tub-thump their way through a party scene or wring from the gentlest conversation every drop of emotion, while Raphael Papo played his eponymous fiddle with bags of character and plenty of klezmer slur.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t quite efface my memories of Craig Revel Horwood\u2019s 2013 production (review here<\/a>) with Paul Michael Glaser, which was my first encounter with Fiddler and, therefore, burned into my memory. However, it is still a show that can move like no other, even if the accents are problematic.<\/p>\n

At Edinburgh Festival Theatre until 13 September.<\/p>\n

Simon Thompson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cast:
<\/strong>Tevye \u2013 Matthew Woodyatt
Golde \u2013 Jodie Jacobs
Tzeitel \u2013 Natasha Jules Bernard
Hodel \u2013 Liz Singleton
Chava \u2013 Hanna Bristow
Yente \u2013 Beverley Klein
Motel \u2013 Dan Wolff
Perchik \u2013 Greg Bernstein
Lazar \u2013 Michael S. Siegel
The Fiddler \u2013 Raphael Papo<\/p>\n

Production:
<\/strong>Director \u2013 Jordan Fein
Choreographer \u2013 Julia Cheng
Designer \u2013 Tom Scutt
Lighting designer \u2013 Aideen Malone
Musical supervision and Additional orchestrations \u2013 Mark Aspinall
Musical director\/Conductor \u2013 Livi van Warmerlo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United Kingdom Joseph Stein and Jerry Bock, Fiddler on the Roof: Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 9.9.2025. (SRT) Raphael Papo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-414413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115182734339613725","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414413","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=414413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}