Fiddler's Reputation Still Bright On 25th Anniversary
Fiddler's Reputation Still Bright on 25th Anniversary When Fiddler on the Roof, the musical comedy based on Sholom Aleichem's Tevye stories, opened in 1964, the recently widowed Jacqueline Kennedy...
...Joe [Stein] had to invent material—particularly the malaprops and the whole style of speech for Tevye— out of his own imagination...
...It was seen by an estimated 37,500,000 people...
...tt took about a week of just wandering around every day trying to get another two lines and another two lines...
...We thought that culture was as remote as we could get from the material of the show...
...The creation of Fiddler began in 1961 when librettist Joseph Stein roughed out an outline and composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick began working on a score...
...These lines—they are this man...
...We had to go through the whole bloody thing and re-translate back to the original to dean this up' "We were very careful not to have any Yiddish words either in the book or the score, except for Fchaim and mazel tof...
...Stein remembered that 'Sheldon and I were in Japan for that opening...
...Finallj they went to producer Fred Coe, who loved it and agreed to take it on...
...t was watching the show about three nights after the number went in...
...That a revered former First Lady was required to measure up to these Jewish expectations suggests the impact on American Jews of the first American musical comedy that was as thoroughly Jewish— American Jewish—as it was American...
...We had no Yiddish at all Later on, in the New York run, Zero found that he could get some extra laughs by throwing in a couple of Yiddish words, which infuriated us' "We all put more into the show than we knew,' Hamick reminisced "We thought we needed a song for Tevye and Golda in the second act Well, I had an idea for a song All I had was 'Do you love me...
...So there were scenes that went on forever, and there were scenes where he put in little jokes—joke-jokes...
...What we discovered was that, when spoken aloud, it lost its quality...
...I suggested that we cut it and end on a funnier note Zero screamed...
...You must leave them, you must1' He was so Forceful about it that we decided to go with his instincts...
...But this tells only a fraction of the story, it played in first-class productions in London, Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Holland, South Africa, Australia, West Germany, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Iceland, South America and Japan, and is still playing in regional and community theaters all over the world...
...That was his vision...
...At the end of that song to my surprise, I burst into tears I thought Why am I crying...
...It was literary...
...Next they sought a director...
...We showed it to one producer, who shall remain anonymous, who said,'I love it but what will you do when we run out of the Hadassah benefits?'' Stein said...
...This is a very wonderful show— in the middle of everything they have a pogrom...
...I am astonished by what has happened to that show—the size ifs taken and the geography it's taken on...
...iti about the dissolution of a way of life.' Rabbins got very excited 'If that's what its about,' he said, then we have to show our audience more of the way of life that is about to dissolve...
...Why am I crying?1 It was because the relationship between Tevye and Golda came out of a deep fantasy I had about my own parents, wanting my own parents to have related that way, which they didrff The show opened first in Detroit "I remember the very first preview audience," said Stein...
...This number has to be a tapestry against which the entire show will play.' And that was the beginning of Tradition.'' It was this concept of the play that touched people worldwide at a time of breakdown of traditional cultures...
...do they understand this show in America?' I said, What do you mean?* He said...
...Jews then split into two factions...
...The material was rewritten again and again...
...I know none of us ever predicted if said Bock...
...He said 'No...
...What...
...We all thought that there was a lot of dialogue from the stories which would work on stage," said Harnick...
...The end of it is very serious and I wondered if it was too serious...
...You wont believe it—in the middle of everything they have a pogrom.'" The idea of using a fiddler preceded the choice of title, Stein said Wen Jerry was working out the form of the show, he was going to use a fiddler to move us From one scene to the next So the sense of a fiddler being a part of the show was cm our minds...
...Jackie, it was said, asked a companion at the theater the meaning of mazel few and of pogrom...
...Fiddler's Reputation Still Bright on 25th Anniversary When Fiddler on the Roof, the musical comedy based on Sholom Aleichem's Tevye stories, opened in 1964, the recently widowed Jacqueline Kennedy saw the show, and a story, probably apocryphal, made the rounds of Jewish cocktail parties...
...He said he never forgot the experience because his forebears come from there Robbins said what he wanted to do was put shtetl life onstage to give another 25 years of life to that shtetl culture which had been devastated during World War II...
...Then, at the run-through, the Japanese producer turned to us and said, Tell me...
...He was absolutely right' It was Robbins who focused the material tor the writers 'He asked what I thought was a surprising question,* Hamtck recalled...
...Then one of us saw the [Marc] Chagall painting and the title came from that' 6y the time the show traveled to Washington, D.C, word-of-mouth had been favorable and fiddler was just about sold out It opened in New York on September 22.1964, and went on to win innumerable awards including nine Tony Awards and Best Musical of toe Year...
...The fifth longest-running musical on Broadway, it ran for eight years, a total of 3,242 performances...
...His reward for that was that many of the critics said, Well, you know, how could he go wrong with that wonderful Sholom Aleichem material...
...We have to have an opening number about the traditions that are going to change...
...which everybody knows,' Harnick said "Our theory was that we were doing the English version of what they were speaking...
...Somewhere along the line he told us that when he was six he had been taken to Poland...
...Bock estimated that he wrote two other songs for every one used, and Stein wrote entire scenes that were never used...
...So we did 'If I Were A Rich Man.' Along the way, I got scared...
...some thought it was okay that she didn't understand pogrom, but at least she should know mazel tov-, the others forgave her for not knowing mazel tov, but felt it was outrageous that she didn't know what a pogrom was...
...In London the show, which ran tor 2JJ30 performances, was named by 16 critics as best foreign musical of the season...
...When Zero [Mostel, who played Tevye, see photo, p. 20] joined us, we knew we had to do a new number for him," Harnick recalled...
...We have to find out what gives these stories their power____' "Somebody [finally) said, Do you know what this play is about...
...Ifs so Japanese'' In a culture fixed on the future, the reaction was different The only I production abroad} I had any real problem with was the one in Israel,' Stein said 'At the run-through in Israel things were happening on stage that I didn't recognize at alt I found that the adaptor had decided to improve it...
...They took their show to producers of the day, but it was turned down again and again...
...And he kept asking hammering at us for months,- What is this show about...
...They auditioned for renowned choreographer Jerome Robbins, who was eager to do it, Harnick said...
...I was in the back of the theater during toe intermission when the people came out Some lady ran For the telephone She called her husband and said, 'Harry, you should have given up your card game tonight This is a very wonderful show...
...Adapting the work of Aleichem for the stage was harder than they expected, the authors acknowledged in a symposium sponsored by the Dramatists Guild that paid tribute to the quality and longevity of the musical...
Vol. 14 • December 1989 • No. 7
