Review: Sun City Shines in its Production of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

The Sun City Palm Desert Performing Arts Club has done a wonderful job with its annual musical for 2017, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. Alas, the production ran for only one weekend, and this review is therefore too late for prospective audience members. However, the club has other offerings coming up which readers may want to attend, and there is always next year.

Knowing the talents of several members of the Sun City club, I was not surprised that the show was wonderfully sung, danced, and acted. However, FIDDLER was also cleverly designed - in fact the sets, props, and costumes were more impressive than in some of the professional versions I've seen. Also, musical director Wayne Abravanel largely managed to avoid the problem with pre-recorded music (specifically, the danger of a performer's falling behind or getting ahead of the music) by conducting the singers.

One of the things that makes FIDDLER ON THE ROOF so hard to produce is the difficulty of successfully capturing Yiddish language intonations and ethnic gestures. Director Cecilia Duran and producer/assistant director Roz Warren Heller kept sight of the need for authenticity, while ensuring that the performances avoided becoming stereotyped or campy. The lead actors convincingly portrayed the persecuted, early twentieth century, isolated Jewish villagers, who were educated only in religious tradition, but nonetheless blessed with decency, common sense, optimism, and biting senses of humor - they brought the shtetl dwellers to life.

The Sun City production is even more notable given the restrictions under which the performing arts club operates - all participants must come from the ranks of the 9000 residents of the 55-and-over community. Yet, if audience members suspended disbelief regarding the characters' ages, they undoubtedly found the portrayals impressive. For example, the performers playing Motel and Perchik (Tom Lord and Bill Stephens) successfully captured the enthusiasm of young men; Mr. Lord hilariously hopped about having an attack of nerves at the thought of asking Tevye for Tzeitel's hand.

Tevye (John Abramson) convincingly argued with God, asserted that he headed the family instead of his strong-willed wife, Golde (Pamla Vale Abramson), and worried about his daughters' futures. Mr. Abramson, who has the perfect singing voice for the role, was especially outstanding in the poignant scenes, bidding farewell to his Siberia-bound second daughter and forcing himself to cut off his third daughter, Chava (Linda Tindall), after her marriage to a non-Jewish soldier (Matt Borzello).

The choreography (by Lark Kenney) was excellent. The ensemble dances consisted largely of horas (circle dances), which are relatively easy for beginners to master, but which look impressive. In addition, however, the three oldest daughters deftly passed brooms and mops back and forth in time to the music in "Matchmaker, Matchmaker," and three ensemble members (Lark Kenney, Louise Erickson, and Kelly Jensen, all playing men) performed a number during the wedding scene that required them to balance bottles on their hats.

Adina Lawson and Karen Schmitt were superb as Tzeitel and Hodel, the two oldest daughters; both have amazing stage presence, and oy, can they sing, dance, and act. Ms. Abramson's Golde and June August's Yente also dominated the stage as they conspired to get Tevye to talk to a prospective groom about marrying Tzeitel and later, as they said their good-byes upon leaving Anatevka. (I have seen three of these performers before; they're always wonderful).

The set (designed by Joyce Ehrenberg, and constructed by her and Jerry Kress) was cleverly conceived - a small hut with wheels and sides that could be unfolded. The hut not only could become Tevye's house and the village tavern, but the roof safely accommodated the fiddler (Lark Kenney), who perches on top at the beginning and end of the show.

One of the most difficult scenes to stage is the nightmare, which Tevye concocts to convince Golde that her dead grandmother wants Tzeitel to marry Motel, instead of the much older Lazar Wolf (Garet Mouat, who plays the character sympathetically, an interpretation that I very much enjoyed). The costumes for the nightmare scene, which consisted of robes and simple, but creepy, white masks, made the characters' faces seem unnaturally elongated. Ms. Duran, the show's director, also played Fruma-Sarah, Lazar's dead wife, who, in Tevye's telling, jealously placed a curse on Tzeitel's head, to be activated if she married Lazar. Fruma-Sarah wore a fabulously designed (by Ms. Duran), garish costume that looked like a cross among Cruella Deville's, Papagena's, and a bride's and that must have been difficult to construct.

The costume team (Roz Warren Heller, Esther Bergmark, Elaine Montgomery, and Chris Acosta) did a fabulous job, not only in simulating period items, but in making sure that the clothing looked religiously authentic, with the men in tzitzit (the fringes that hang below the wearers' shirts) and the women wearing head scarves appropriate to their status - unmarried women tying scarves behind their necks so their long hair showed through, married women covering up every bit of hair while still wearing scarves tied in the back, and Yente, as a widow, allowing bangs to show through her otherwise conservative head covering.

Despite a few minor glitches, Sun City's FIDDLER ON THE ROOF is a production of which the participants can be proud. The cast members whom I have not specifically mentioned also deserve credit for their parts in this successful undertaking. They are ShaRon Johnson and Esther Bergmark (the youngest daughters), Mort Winkel (the rabbi), Ron Kuzoian (the rabbi's son), Ramona Larson (Motel's mother), Glen Conly (the bookseller), Ed Heller (the beggar), Jerry Kress (the constable), Harvey Greenberg (the priest), Harvey Greenberg and David Brendel (the Russians), Ramona Larson (Grandma Tzeitel), and Linda Lyon, Fran Ticknor, and Cecily Lawson (the other villagers).

Although, as I indicated, the short run has already concluded, the club will present a staged reading of SILLY TALK on Monday, April 17, 2017, at 7:30 in the Speakers Hall. Additionally, it is holding auditions on April 12th and 13th for its June 2nd-4th, 2017 presentation of an evening of one act plays.

If the upcoming offerings are as entertaining as FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, they will be worth attending. L'Chaim!

Photo Credits: Patricia Finn; Photo of Fruma-Sarah by Audrey Liebross

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