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PATRICK MARMION reviews Fiddler On The Roof's first night at the Barbican Theatre: Topol made the film sing, but this Fiddler dances to its own tune
The show is surely still best known from the 1971 film starring Chaim Topol as the hard-working, God-fearing milkman Tevye with five feisty daughters to marry off.
But the great achievement of this Olivier Award-winning production (first seen in Regent’s Park last year) is to stand squarely on its own feet – thanks largely to the terrific Adam Dannheisser as Tevye (alongside Lara Pulver as his wife Golde). Accompanied by a gangly violinist (Raphael Papo) who mirrors his inner pain, Tevye – and the show – are buoyed by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s music and lyrics, most famously in the stomp of Tradition, but also in the comic plea for God to smite him with a just small fortune in If I Were A Rich Man. And Julia Cheng’s reeling choreography is a riot –whether it’s toasting Tevye’s eldest daughter’s betrothal in the tavern (ominously interrupted by menacing Cossacks), or at the actual wedding, which has celebrants spinning like huge black spiders with bottles balanced on their heads.
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