It's a wonderful life

A fine Fiddler

by Bill Rodriguez

Life affirmation in the midst of the horrific, that's a tough one to convey. Think of the minefield the film Life Is Beautiful led us through, and the explosive reactions of many. The eternally optimistic Fiddler On the Roof is unlikely to set you off, though. From its title to its infinitely adaptable central character Tevye, the musical is a love song to adaptability with the minor key left for the background.

It doesn't hurt that in the touring production Providence Performing Arts Center (through April 22), Tevye is played by the smoothly appealing Theodore Bikel, associated with the role like cream cheese is with the bagel.

We are in the little Russian village of Anatevka, in a colorful if poor Jewish community. The time is 1905, and word of pogroms elsewhere has reached them when the story begins, a drumbeat in the distance that will soon become deafening. Relationships with the local Cossacks so far has been live-and-let-live.

Before the outside world intrudes, their shtetl life offers problems no more serious than someone buying a horse that turns out to be a mule. The low-key laments are summed up by one exchange with Tevye: "How goes it?" "The same." "I'm sorry to hear that."

In an apt image for his hard-luck life, Tevye the dairyman is always pulling around his milk cart because his horse has gone lame. Why, he asks, if he can walk on two legs, can't the horse settle for three? With such wisecracks, Tevye lifts his eyes in an ongoing conversation with God that sounds like he's working on a Catskills stand-up routine. His intimidating wife Golde (Susan Cella) gives him plenty of material, but it is his five daughters that turn his life from one long kvetch into a drama. One by one, the three oldest fall in love. Oy.

Matchmaker Yente (Miriam Babin) makes an offer Tevye's poor family can hardly refuse, to marry off Tzeitel (Eileen Tepper) to the wealthy butcher, Lazar Wolf (John Preece). But she and the poor village tailor Motel (Michael Iannucci) have a different idea. Terrified of telling his wife that he has decided to break the agreement with Lazar, Tevye has an inspiration. He describes to Golde a dream he had, in which her mother insisted that Tzeitel marry the tailor and, for backup, Lazar's screaming harridan of a wife protests. This all is staged with the flurry and acrobatics of a circus act, of course.

Daughter Hodel (Tamra Hayden) is the next to break ranks. She and poor university student Perchik (Daniel Cooney) tell Tevye -- tell, not ask -- that they are going to marry. His radical notions go beyond ignoring such intergenerational niceties and introducing boy-girl dancing at Tzeitel's wedding feast. When he is arrested in Kiev for revolutionary activities and is sent to Siberia, Hodel wants to go too.

But all that is just practice for, as Tevye sees it, God's real test of him. Daughter Chava (Dana Lynn Caruso) likes to read, an activity that has attracted the attention of a thoughtful young villager who isn't Jewish, Fyedka (Brad Drummer). As adaptable as Tevye has learned to become, bending so far as to accept this would break him, he roars.

The opening song, "Tradition," sets this motif memorably and emphatically, thanks to composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick. Though some of their other collaborations, such as She Loves Me and The Apple Tree, never made musical history, Harnick's lyrics earned them a 1960 Pulitzer for Letters for Fiorello. Much of Fiddler On the Roof's staying power is due to its many enduring songs. Tevye's theme,"If I Were a Rich Man," is a wistful classic, and "Miracles of Miracles" -- sung by an elated Motel who has just been given the nod to marry -- is an anthem of joy. On the down-tempo side, the ensemble wedding song "Sunrise, Sunset" catalogues change as sweetly as Tevye's and Golde's "Do You Love Me?" does stability.

Needless to say, hearing and seeing Bikel is the major attraction of this production. Zero Mostel may have created the role and Topol played it well in the 1971 movie, but Bikel has become the definitive Tevye He headed the first national tour in 1967 and has played the droll mensch more than 1700 times by now. The original production may have won nine Tony Awards, but it has taken the whimsical and mock-weary presence of Bikel, now 77, to make it endure as it has. He may not be able to snap-kick in the Cossack dance number, but he's still the snappiest presence in an enjoyable company.