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re: Teachout on FIDDLER
Posted by: NewtonUK 08:39 am EST 12/23/15
In reply to: re: Teachout on FIDDLER - Chromolume 12:47 am EST 12/23/15
I will say that I would agree that the 2004 production was a better piece of theatre, a better production of FIDDLER - despite the effort in that production to stifle all comedy. When Mr Molina's run was up, Harvey Fierstein redressed that balance beautifully.
I also fall on the side of those who believe that universality comes from specificity. The red anorak, the girls dressed as boys dancing at the wedding, the lack of 'Jewishness' in many performances - all of these create a general world, just as MR Sher created in his production of AWAKE AND SING. Watching the life of Tevye and his shtetl in 1905 allows us to go - oh my, I identify with all of this' - much more than banging us on the head, assuming we're stupid, and saying - 'See - he's a modern NY JEw - just like these Jews - get it?" Except of course the Jews of Anatevka would never have bare heads.

I will say, one burden that MR Sher seems to have removed from FIDDLER is that of the events if WW2 which killed so many JEws. In 1964 - not more than two decades since we learned of the holocaust - the pogrom, and image of the JEws on the road, moistly with one suitcase per family, very strongly played on our feeling that these Jews were marching to their doom in the camps. All the revivals I have seen made us feel about the same.

What the red anorak DOES do, is give the final expulsion of the JEws from Anatevka a gleam of hipe and hapiness. After all, most of them have been talking about emigrating to America. And in fact. the pogroms of 1905 led a large % of the Russin Jews to emigrate to our shows.

Unintentionally, The Tsar and his viciously anti semitic soldiers and police, saved 100;s of thousands of Jews from death at the hands of the NAzis, or the Russians themselves.

So in a way, the pogroms of 1905 - as awful as they were - had a silver lining. The red anorak does remind us of that. From 1881-1917, 1.5 Russian Jews emigrated to the US. ANd have enriched our country SO greatly.
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