Thursday, March 27, 2008

Fiddler on the Roof

The Greeley Players are a volunteer community theatre which is several notches better than average. They performed Fiddler on the Roof. This is an excellent play for large numbers of people, but much more difficult for a small troupe. A lot of action...lots of people..it is a village after all, and everybody has something to say! The book was written by Sholem Aleichem, translated and compiled by Joseph Stein, and was originally entitled "Tevya and his daughters".
Jerry Brock wrote the music for this musical, and they have become familiar to us all. "If I were a Rich Man" still remains my favorite, but my mother's favorite was "Sunrise-sunset", a real tear jerker.
This great classic play was the first that the Greeley Players had done back when they first came together in 1990. They did the longer version, the one that set records on Broadway (more than 3000 performances!! Oh my!) rather than the slightly less scary version that Stein had written for high school theatre. Last night was opening night, and it seems to be sold out for the entire weekend.
I found that during this performance, I identified more with Tevya than with his willful daughter's tailor husband. Interesting what a different perspective one gets when you see this play again after 30 years. And a good time was had by all!

more info here....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_on_the_Roof


This was the second play I attended in under 7 days! Last week it was "Shakespere's Dog", this week it is "Fiddler on the Roof". And in about 2 hours, I'll be doing a demo at a public school, dressing the teachers in armour and fielding questions from grade fours. That should burn me out!

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Fun! I've always loved Fiddler. Sunrise, Sunset gets me every time!

Unknown said...

Fiddler on the roof is a fantastic story, I love the movie.