Harvey Fierstein as Tevye: Sounds Crazy, No?

Here's Ben Brantley's (somewhat mixed) review of Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler, from today's New York Times:

An Exotic Tevye in Old Anatevka
By BEN BRANTLEY

A kazoo has joined the music makers of the placid Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" at the Minskoff Theater. From the moment it sounds its first word, Harvey Fierstein's voice causes an entire audience to prick up its ears in the manner of a dog startled by a sharp whistle.

Heard not so long ago issuing from the plus-size form of Edna Turnblad, the agoraphobic housewife in the musical "Hairspray," Mr. Fierstein's voice is one of the most distinctive in theater, belonging to the legend-making league of those of Carol Channing and Glynis Johns. And though a kazoo is what it most often brings to mind, it also variously evokes a congested saxophone, wind in a bottle and echoes from a crypt. It is, in a way, its own multicolored show. Whether it fits comfortably into the little Russian village of Anatevka, where "Fiddler" is set, is another issue.

When David Leveaux's production of this much-loved, much-performed 40-year-old musical of life on a Jewish shtetl first opened last February, it was notable principally for its elegant, autumnal set (by Tom Pye) and its anesthetizing blandness. In the central role of Tevye the milkman, a part created in 1964 by Zero Mostel, the usually excellent Alfred Molina seemed sad, tentative and often absent. The whole show appeared to suffer from a similar lack of engagement with its material.

Mr. Leveaux, the fashionable London director behind the Broadway revivals of "Nine" and Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers," may have been aiming for a tone of lyrical lament, of a goodbye to a folkloric way of life about to disappear. But it has always been the robustness as well as the sentimentality of Jerry Bock's and Sheldon Harnick's songs and Joseph Stein's book that has made "Fiddler" such an enduring favorite. Led by the somnambulistic Mr. Molina, and a bizarrely chic Randy Graff as Tevye's wife, Golde, Mr. Leveaux's interpretation sometimes barely had a pulse.

That omission has been remedied to some extent by Mr. Molina's new replacement. Even at his quietest, Mr. Fierstein, who won a Tony Award for "Hairspray," has the presence of a waking volcano. And lest anyone think he needs drag to be big, let it be noted that he wears Tevye's tattered trousers with a homey and winning ease. To see the gray-bearded, bright-eyed Mr. Fierstein pulling a horseless milk cart with sardonic resignation is, you may well think, to look upon the image of the Tevye of the Sholem Aleichem stories that inspired the show.

It is Mr. Fierstein's greatest asset as a performer, that unmistakable voice, that perversely shatters this illusion. Theatergoers who saw - or more to the point heard - this actor in "Hairspray" will require at least 10 minutes to banish echoes of Edna. But even audience members unfamiliar with Mr. Fierstein may find him a slightly jarring presence.

Tevye must to some degree be an everyman, albeit in exaggerated, crowd-pleasing form. And Mr. Fierstein, bless him, shakes off any semblance of ordinariness as soon as he opens his mouth. Every phrase he speaks or sings, as he shifts uncannily among registers, becomes an event. And the effect is rather as if Ms. Channing were playing one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's simple, all-American heroines in "Oklahoma!" or "Carousel."

A master of droll comic melodramas in fringe theater long before he became a Broadway star with his "Torch Song Trilogy" in 1982, Mr. Fierstein inflects every line with at least a touch of the grandeur of old Hollywood movies, whether he's being husky with sentimentality, smoky with regret or growly with displeasure.

This can be quite a bit of fun. Tevye's first solo, "If I Were a Rich Man," takes on a fascinating new life, as Mr. Fierstein slides and rasps through its wordless connecting phrases. But it is sometimes hard to credit this exotic spirit as that of a tradition-bound father who has trouble making the adjustment to changing times.

Andrea Martin, who has replaced Ms. Graff as Golde, might do well to borrow a bit of Mr. Fierstein's idiosyncracy. This actress, who first came to attention as a flamboyantly eccentric comedian on "SCTV," is on her best behavior here, as if being in a classic Broadway musical meant being quiet and dignified. (She was livelier in the recent revival of "Oklahoma!")There is nothing jolting or inappropriate in her performance, but there is nothing memorable either.

The same might be said of the rest of the show, though Tricia Paoluccio and Laura Shoop bring a fresh and welcome piquancy as two of Tevye's five daughters. John Cariani, who was nominated for a Tony as the nerdy Motel the tailor, has now pushed his performance to grating comic extremes.

The onstage orchestra sounds perfectly pleasant, and the dancing, restaged by Jonathan Butterell from Jerome Robbins's original choreography, is agreeable. Yet somewhere there is a disconnect between Mr. Leveaux's elegiac reimagining of "Fiddler," evident in its poetically somber look, and the dinner-theater-style comic performances of much of the cast. To mourn the passing of the traditional life of Anatevka, you need to have an organic and fluid sense of that life that this production rarely achieves.

As for the show's new Tevye, it would seem that this "Fiddler" has gone from having too little of a personality at its center to having too much of one.

Still, as Tevye himself might argue, better an overspiced feast than a famine.

Thanks bree. I knew that it was about time for Harvey to get reviewed...

The Wall Street Journal's review, by Terry Teachout, is a lot more positive. I can't copy the whole thing in here because you have to have a paid subscription to the WSJ to read it online (I'm looking at it in print), but here are some excerpts:

"his voice, which sounds like a bullfrog stuck in a double bass, makes a decidedly odd impression in "Sunrise, Sunset" and "Sabbath Prayer." … Still, he more than makes up in comic prowess for what he lacks in vocal luster,. and though he hasn't combed all the "Hairspray" out of his intermittently flouncy mugging, Mr. Fierstein rises effortlessly - as well as believably - to "Fiddler"'s not-infrequent moments of high drama. Warmly paternalistic with his wayward daughters, darkly inward as he crashes head-on into the harsh demands of tradition, he pulls off a role he wasn't born to play, and does it with honesty and style."

The review also has praise for Andrea Martin, saying that "her voice isn't all that much higher than his (this must be the first "Fiddler" in which Tevye and Golde are sung by a bass and baritone), but her plain-spoken, no-nonsense performance is right in every other way, and she and Mr. Fierstein even contrive to make something fresh and affecting out of "Do You Love Me?" - no small trick after 40 years of hard use."

Clive Barnes was somewhat more enthusiastic in the NY Post:
'ROOF' TOPS

By CLIVE BARNES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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January 21, 2005 --

MORE than 40 years ago, Jerome Rob- bins told me of his latest project: a musical about Sholom Aleichem's dairyman, Tevye.

"That's a strange idea," I blurted, thinking, "That's a terrible idea."

Boy, was I wrong. Tevye ?- thanks to Joseph Stein's book, Jerry Bock's music and Sheldon Harnick's lyrics, not to mention Sholom Aleichem and Robbins himself ?- is one of the truly great characters of the Broadway stage.

Since the role's 1964 originator, the indelibly remembered Zero Mostel, we have had Tevyes of all shapes and sizes. David Leveaux's production began with a British Tevye, Alfred Molina, who, miracle of miracles, successfully eschewed the role's traditional Yiddish accent.

Now we have a gay Tevye, with the uncloseted Harvey Fierstein.



Let's be frank: We'd never think of referring to Sir Ian McKellen as offering a gay Richard III. But Fierstein's previous major stage roles have been in his own "Torch Song Trilogy" and, in drag, as Edna Turnblad in "Hairspray."

Hence the uplifted eyebrows at the news that Fierstein was to play one of the better-known Jewish patriarchs since Moses. Had I been asked, I might have said, "That's a strange idea!"

Yet right from the start, Fierstein is a splendid, dominating Tevye, from his Falstaffian girth to his untamed forest of a beard ?- and he grabs control of the musical with both hands.

While he doesn't overact, he's occasionally overly roguish, his eyes glinting a tad too mischievously at his happily complaisant audience. There's a certain lack of that patriarchal gravitas, which even the wonderfully outrageous Mostel conveyed.

Fierstein's singing, pure gravel and honey, is as effective as it is personalized. And his nimbly elephantine dancing is the best I have seen from any Tevye ?- Robbins himself would have been enchanted.

Fierstein is handsomely supported by the new Golde, Andrea Martin, who gives a beautifully wry, comic performance. Firm, vinegary but sweet, she's a 24-carat Golde.

Simply because it runs away from "Tradition, Tradition," Leveaux's restaging will naturally remain controversial.

I like the way it (and Tom Pye's setting) places the world of Anatevka village into a realistic Russia on the eve of revolution rather than the original's Marc Chagall-charged, Yiddish never-never land.

The performances, especially from Tevye's daughters, are beautifully in place, but here and there the production is under- or overacted. This is particularly true of John Cariani's hammy Motel, who steals laughs by behaving like a silent-movie idol on speed.

But, by and large, this is a fascinating reworking of one of the last great classic Broadway musicals. Miracle of miracles ?- it still fires on all cylinder

Kissel was even less enthusiastic in the NY Daily News:

Fierstein isn't fit
as a 'Fiddler'






Andrea Martin is now playing Golde and Harvey Fierstein is Tevye in the Broadway revival of 'Fiddler on the Roof' at the Minskoff.

Fiddler on the Roof. Musical by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein. With Harvey Fierstein, Andrea Martin and others. At the Minskoff. Tickets: $35-$100. (212) 307-4100.
When the current revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" opened a year ago, with Alfred Molina as Tevye, there were complaints that its British director, David Leveaux, had made it too bland, as if he had geared it toward tourists who might not be able to accept a truly Jewish "Fiddler."

The current Tevye is Harvey Fierstein, who is unmistakably Jewish. But is that enough?

When you think about it, the Jewishness of Tevye is almost beside the point. The reason the 1964 Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical has swept the globe is because it's about a man whose understanding of his world is challenged - and overturned - at every moment, which is the case with everyone living in the modern world. The Jews are just an extreme example.

What makes Fierstein's performance unsatisfying is that he doesn't project any of the depth of Tevye's dilemma. He sees it as a series of comic turns.

At times, in fact, I wondered if Leveaux had come back to direct him or whether the task had been entrusted to Gerard Alessandrini, who does "Forbidden Broadway." Too often it seems like a parody of "Fiddler, " rather than the real thing.

At first, I thought I might find Fierstein appealing because that famous gravel voice suddenly conjured up my cousin Chaike, whom I had not thought about in nearly 50 years, but the "family resemblance" was not enough to sustain interest.

Although Fierstein gets most of the music, the voice itself eventually becomes, like any running gag, tiresome.

More important, one does not have the sense of a bedeviled father or a man who has a passionate, embattled relationship with God but rather an actor eager to please an admiring audience.

In addition to the comedy, which, of course, he does with gusto, there are emotional moments he does not deliver.

Andrea Martin, for example, who plays his wife, Golde, splendidly, has a shattering moment when she screams in joy on seeing Chava, the daughter who married a Gentile. It pierces the heart.

Fierstein does not get as much out of the corresponding moment, when Tevye struggles not even to look at Chava.

The daughters themselves at this point in the run seem unusually highstrung, but there's no getting around the fact that shtetl life was very stressful.

Musically, some of the best moments were "Miracle of Miracles," sung by the wonderfully zany John Cariani as Mottl, and Patrick Heusinger's lines as Fyedka in "To Life."

The production as a whole has held up well, especially its most inventive scene, the Chagall-esque treatment of Tevye's dream.

Ultimately, it is the show itself that remains towering as a rock, projecting its power and poignance beyond the limitations of any performer.

Originally published on January 21, 2005

See, this is why we need to see it for ourselves. Two reviews in complete contradiction of one another.

oooo. didn't see Kissel's review...

and this is why I NEED to go to New York.

Maybe not see this offering (though I'm hoping to), but New York's got it going on!

Doesn't it!??!

Yes, indeed...

Here's yet another review, this one by Michael Feingold (in my opinion, the best drama critic in New York) in the Village Voice:

Gay In Good Health
What happens when a mainstream musical meets one of America's most beloved outsiders?

by Michael Feingold
January 25th, 2005 12:20 PM

In some ways, the social phenomenon of Harvey Fierstein's appearance as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof is as interesting as the performance itself. Here, after all, we have an artist who represents almost everything that Fiddler is not: a downtown cult figure whose beginnings lie in the Ridiculous, with its camp rebellion against pop culture; an author-performer moved at least partly through his political anger to re-enter the mainstream and become a pop culture hero himself; an openly gay artist partly known for appearances in drag, last celebrated as the onstage inhabitant of Edna Turnblad's oversize dress in Hairspray. Fierstein is the exact opposite, one might say, of the middlebrow, middle-class, heterosexual mainstream form we call the classic Broadway musical.
But as always in art, the opposite is as true as the initial premise: Symbol of the mainstream, the musical has always been the composite invention of a set of outsider groups; gays?-the outsider group that is inside every other group?-have always been one of its basic elements. And innumerable artists who've enhanced the art form came from minority-theater roots not unlike Fierstein's: Before his collaboration with composer Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, Fiddler's lyricist, made much of his reputation writing satirical songs performed in Off-Broadway revues by artists like Bea Arthur and the late Dorothy Greener?-cult figures in the gay Greenwich Village of their heyday as Harvey has been in his; only back then, gay was a secret code and not a niche market.

In our day, the Broadway musical has started to lose the richness of the multi-ethnic composite that made it so distinctively "American," and has become a product of international marketing, with the grim, anonymous look and sound of high-tech multi- national plug and play. That is its principal problem today, and was the principal problem with David Leveaux's production of Fiddler when it opened a year ago: The show looked, sounded, and felt much more like a standard European production of anything than like a staging of Fiddler. Its gray tone of perpetual autumn and its curt, inward-turned emotional style missed both the reality of the village life being portrayed and the zest of the American authors' satisfaction in looking back on it and seeing how much of the memory had survived. Leveaux's awkward attempt to reproduce images from Chagall literally in the dream sequence only underscored his failure to realize that the whole thing should have been a dream infused with Chagall's sensibility, for which he had substituted a rather reductive analysis.

So the question naturally came: How would the presence of Harvey Fierstein, trading Edna's bouffant wig for Tevye's skullcap, alter this freeze-dried, reduced Fiddler, with its pallid climaxes and its cold heart? Would Tevye, the philosophical dairyman with five daughters, suddenly reveal a nelly streak? Or would Harvey's downtown sensibility find him constantly stepping out of character, commenting on Tevye's mores, deconstructing the story with offhand gestures and raised eyebrows as it went along? No fear?-first and foremost, Fierstein is a pro. The staging may be cold but Tevye is warm. Unlike his predecessor in the role, Alfred Molina, Fierstein may turn the emotions inward but never underplays them. If there are mild hints of a gay sensibility in his whirlwind hand gestures, or his occasional Edith Evans line readings, there's also plenty of the Jewishness that this revival of a work by Jewish artists on a Jewish subject so signally lacked before he stepped in. And who says the most famous gay actor-playwright of his time can't play a man who loves his daughters, or wonders if his wife loves him? Fierstein is convincing on both counts. His intensity seems to have stirred an equivalent response in Andrea Martin, who invests Golde with a housewifely fierceness that the marvelous Randy Graff, playing opposite Molina, somehow never located.

Fierstein's shortfall comes, predictably, in singing, which has never been his field of expertise. "You are an extraordinary person," Gertrude Stein told Picasso, "but your limits are extraordinarily there." The role of Edna was tailored to the limitations of Harvey's extraordinary voice; Fiddler was tailored to an artist of operatic vocal capacity. (Imagine Fierstein taking up any other role that had been sung by both Jan Peerce and Robert Merrill.) It isn't that he can't hit the notes, but that he can't hit them ringingly. His warmth and charisma resonate, but his vocal tones never will.

To speak of Harvey's charisma is to mention another aspect of the role for which he's an inexact fit. Tevye, however wily, is a poor man with an eager hunger for life. Offer him schnapps, he drinks; offend his pride, he says, "Get off my land." Zero Mostel's comic gift, around which the role was built, lay precisely in his ability to seize every moment; a zest for living was his onstage essence. Fierstein's comic persona, carefully constructed over decades, is that of a person who thinks first; his zest for living always comes on the afterbeat. (The quintessential Harvey moment is the scene of Torch Song Trilogy in which Arnold's ward lures him into ordering breakfast.) In this regard, his quality doesn't hinder the show but shifts its sensibility?-or would if it had any sensibility to shift. The paradox of casting Fierstein is that his strengths throw the shortcomings of Leveaux's production into high relief, while his limitations make you long for an alternative version, with the sweep and style of Jerome Robbins's original, that would carry him along. His presence in the role brings back just enough of Fiddler's reality to make you resent the lack of the rest.

That makes sense. Good review.

Great review. He hits on the issues that I wanted to hear about!

This is a big part of why I want to witness this show. It's not just a show. Fierstein in this role is a cultural phenomena, the beginning of...something. Not sure what yet but it's important, I think.

I thought I'd revive this old thread to mention some news/rumors about the current Broadway production of Fiddler.

The show has posted a closing notice for January 6. Harvey Fierstein is still playing Tevye, and there has been no talk of his leaving, so it looks as if he's planning to stay to the end.

However, Andrea Martin -- who went into the show as Golde at the same time Harvey took over as Tevye -- left the show on July 31, and the role is currently being played by her understudy. Rumor has it that Rosie O'Donnell may take over as Golde in September. If she does, that should give the box office a boost for the last few months of the run.

hmmm

Thanks for the bump, bree.

Yes, very interesting rumor, bree. Thanks!

I saw Rosie in Seussical a while back. Can't quite picture her as Golde with grown daughters...

<grinned and thought of you kids when I saw this>

Thanks for thinking of us, bethie!

I hope you'll be with me the next time I hit theatre row, maxisoneinamillion.