Fiddler on the Roof - "the enduring songs take you on an emotional rollercoaster that is a joy"

After a sold-out successful run at the Chocolate Factory, this beautiful moving production of Fiddler on the Roof transfers to the Playhouse on the other side of the river for a thirty-two-week run and expands to fill the venue. The transformation of the stalls into the rural Russian village with a thrust stage is exquisite and creates a perfect setting for the emotional dramatic tale of a changing society with traditions breaking down and love blossoming. 

In some ways the structure of Joseph Stein's book and Jerry Bock's music creates a challenge for the director and cast. We are served with the best three songs in the first thirty minutes with the opening "Tradition" followed with "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" and "If I were a rich man" and nothing that follows quite matches these wonderful songs. They do elegantly set up the situation and the central characters and their relationship, so you start to care about them as a family with the central roles of Mama and Papa. The slow breakdown of tradition and matchmaking and the revolution spreading through Russia is the context for rest of the musical. But as the story gets bleaker, so the emotional connection with Tevye's family grows. In Trevor Nunn's direction he brings out every comic moment and every heart wrenching breakdown in the traditions. 

At the heart of the show is Andy Nyman as Tevye who holds centre stage especially in his conversations with God and in weighing up the arguments with great comic timing and shrugs yet also portrays the torment and anguish he feels. He delivers his songs well although largely speaking in tune. Opposite him is the wonderful Judy Kuhn as Golde his loyal long-suffering wife and together they deliver "Do you love me?" delightfully. His oldest daughters Tzeitel (Molly Osborne) and Hodel (Harriet Bunton) stand out in a very large ensemble cast.

Nunn's groupings are excellent and the choreography with Matt Cole recreating some of Jerome Robbins original routines look amazing in the big set piece moments like the Wedding and Bottle dance that ends Act One or the drunken dance in the bar in "To Life". The band slips down the steps from their raised platform to accompany the dancers and create magical pictures for the audience.

 The lighting design by Tim Lutkin skilfully illuminates Robert Jones's village roof tops and creates the atmospheric setting from the beautiful Sunset through the trees to the bleak winter of the finale. I don't think I have seen a more effective lighting design in the West End for years.

This may be a story of Jewish oppression in the last century but it's messages of love and hope in the face of adversity resonate strongly in today's troubled society and the enduring songs take you on an emotional rollercoaster that is a joy.

Nick Wayne 

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

West End transfers of Emilia and Home, I'm Darling.

Emilia had a triumphant debut short run at the Globe in 2018, a perfect setting for a play that challenges the established attitudes and has a dig at Shakespeare global iconic status as a writer and now transfers into the harsher commercial world of the West End for a longer run. It will be interesting to see whether this overtly feminist writing by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm with an all-female cast, production team and producers can attract the wider theatre going audience at the Vaudeville.

Though it is a play that is about a little-known figure from Shakespearean times Emilia Bassano (1569-1645) who published a book of poems called Salve Devs Rex Judeaorum in 1611 to express her feminist views under a religious wrapper to get around male dominated publishing restrictions of the time, it is written very much as play for today. It is structured with set piece rages against the suppression of women by men as sound bites for a young rebellious audience and urges them to burn the (establishment) house down. The whoops of delight and raucous laughter from the audience tells you that it is resonating with the early audiences, so loud were they you could often not hear the next line as the cast did not allow enough time for the reaction to subside.

Malcolm has taken the book of poetry and the idea of the Dark Lady in Shakespeare's Sonnet to create a flight of imagination of her back story as a lover of Shakespeare, someone whose writing he stole for his plays and a creator of messages of hope for women of the society in a sort of rebellious WhatsApp group of the time. So determined is she to create this evangelistic campaigning saint that often she forgets to create a plot and drama that draws us into the story rather than be the recipient of a lecture. Only occasionally does she and Director Nicole Charles create genuine moments of absorbing theatre that hint of what this could have been. 

The closing of Act 1 is a madcap portrayal of Emilia invasion of the Globe stage in protest at her words being stolen by The Bard although this may have lost something when being translated into a Victorian proscenium arch theatre. Then at end of Act 2 we get a dramatic moment as Eve is burned as a witch for promoting the messages written by Emilia before Clare Perkins as the older Emilia closes the show with a rebel rousing call for uprising that brought most of the audience to its feet. Indeed, it is Perkins who drives the show along as narrator and cheer leader with able support from her younger self played by Saffron Coomber and Adelle Leonce.

It is an interesting idea, but theatre should not be like being at a political rally but should engage with us in a more subtle and impactful way by moving us and having us care about the characters not just about the words they are saying. It was fascinating to go from a matinee of Emilia to an evening performance of Home I'm Darling just around the corner. 

Here is another new play first staged in the cosseted world of Arts Council funded National Portfolio companies transferring to the West End with commercial producers. Laura Wade explores the same feminist themes about the role of women as long-suffering wives and uses the fifties (as opposed to Shakespearean times) to contrast with the modern era. There is a powerful and moving speech by Sylvia (Susan Brown) which challenges not only her daughter Judy but also historical perceptions and attitudes.

However, it is Katherine Parkinson who is the star of the show as the smart fifties obsessed 38-year-old struggling to reconcile and understand the reaction of those around her to her own life choices. The writing is sharp and witty, the staging slick and well-choreographed and the characters well developed and believable. It challenges the audience by the interplays between the characters to think of the issues of #metoo campaign in a work setting and in personal relationships without lecturing and is so much more effective as a result.

Both efforts are to be applauded for the opportunity they provide for female writers, directors designers and actresses to challenge audiences and attitudes in the West End and it will be interesting to see which is commercially the most successful.

Nick Wayne

Emilia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Home I'm Darling ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️