Review: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Barbican

Jordan Fein understands that Fiddler On the Roof is more than just Jews and jazz hands. For him, it’s as much a Greek tragedy that cuts to the heart of the human condition as much as it is a piece of summer escapism. Philip Roth infamously derided it as 'shtetl kitsch’. He might have retracted his comment if he saw Fein’s psychologically streamlined production, now proudly revived and armed with thirteen Olivier nominations.

Something is lost with the transfer to the Barbican - al fresco light brought bucolic charm to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. An actual sunset was gloriously timed to coincide with "Sunrise, Sunset". A rare serving of actual theatre magic. But In lieu of this the comparatively confined Barbican has sharpened its dramatic knife edge that slices even deeper into the soul.

Concentrating the cast into a tighter space focuses the energy and charges every dynamic with new electricity. Anatevka’s community warmth is tighter knit, but the demands of tradition more suffocating. The ensemble of villagers becomes a character in themselves. They flank the action sitting on stage throughout, their vibrant but naturalistic movement rougher, more magnetically organic, more chaotically alive.

As before, Tom Scutt’s stage is sliced from the ground and peeled up, as if to reveal the history underneath. In Regent’s Park it curbed up from the ground remaining static, here it hovers both as a roof to cushion the community from the outside world, but it also manifests the outside world’s pressure bearing down on them, technological and political revolutions with the threat of accompanying violence looming over them.

There’s a tinge of the absurd about it, not just in the way it hangs ominously. Adam Dannheiser’s Tevye throws a weary glance upwards in his God-directed monologues. The slab of unblinking concrete glares back. A wink to Beckett might be a stretch, but it suggests a stark hopelessness to Tevye’s ponderous philosophising. Upon news of an impending pogrom a villager asks the town rabbi if now would be a good time for the messiah to come. “We will have to wait a little longer” the rabbi mutters dejectedly. Nothing to be done.

Dannheiser is the show’s beating heart, but it’s the women who serve as its lifeblood, pulsing energy through every vineagery exchange. His Tevye is stoic and stern, a tragic figure quietly questioning his identity trapped between the colliding tectonic plates of tradition and change. Should he obey Jewish custom and choose his daughters' suitors, or allow them the freedom to marry for love?

Natasha Jules Bernard’s Tzeitel is buoyant and brash, Georgia Bruce’s Hodel is charmingly pragmatic, both vibrant contrasts to Hannah Bristow’s bookish Chava, more introverted, but equally radiant with feeling. Chava's liberation takes a curious spotlight as Bristow, clarinet in hand, leads the music in the production’s dying embers, a shift in focus down the generations and a suggestion that the wheel of change is spun by female hands.

Fiddler On the Roof plays at Barbican until 19 July

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