What a bittersweet delight to see again this revelatory revival of the Broadway classic set in a Jewish stetl, beset by both antisemitic pogroms and modern ideas, seven months after its debut at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Jordan Fein’s staging remains joyful, exhilarating and humane, the big hits – Tradition; If I Were a Rich Man; Sunrise, Sunset – magnificently stirring.
A terrifically tight, partially recast ensemble is again led by warm, beautifully-sung performances from Broadway veteran Adam Dannheisser as a bullish version of the village milkman Tevye – comically aggrieved by his five daughters and lack of wealth - and Lara Pulver as his brisk wife Golde. Tom Scutt’s ski-slope roof of waving corn, on which Raphael Papo’s fiddler has his precariously symbolic base, has sadly been trimmed and levelled to fit indoors, however: and we miss the original, surprising connection to the air and the soil.
