On stage at the Theatre Royal, a wheat field stands tall and stretches into the sky – a lovely quirk of design that also takes our eponymous Fiddler on to his roof. If you look closely, you’ll see crimson poppies tucked among them, an unexpected offering of beauty, hope and memory.
This is Anatevka, the fictional village in tsarist Russia’s Pale of Settlement, now Ukraine (the wheat is an elegant tribute) and home to the characters of Fiddler on the Roof, the much-loved and lauded musical by Joseph Stein, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock based on stories by Sholem Aleichem. The first musical to play Broadway for more than 3,000 performances, and still popular more than 60 years after its debut, this is a musical that – like those poppies – persists.
