★★★★☆
It’s back – again! Fiddler on the Roof, one of the great musicals of the 1960s, returns to Sydney on stage at the Theatre Royal.
Created by Jerry Bock (music) Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) and Joseph Stein (book) based on stories by Sholem Aleichem, Fiddler is rarely out of production, though many (like myself) will recall it from the 1971 film adaptation starring Topol.
This touring UK production created by director Jordan Fein, with choreography from Julia Cheng, and design from Tom Scutt, matches an all-Australian cast with immortal music and a timeless story.
Tevye (Troy Sussman) is an impoverished milkman living in Anatevka, a Jewish shtetl in The Pale (now Ukraine) of Tsarist Russia. Married to Golde (Alexis Fishman), he has five daughters, of whom three, Tzeitel (Freya Boltman), Hodel (Ellen Ebbs) and Chava (Caity Plummer) are about to cause him grief.
When Tzeitel rejects the local matchmaker Yente’s (Sigrid Thornton) choice of husband, Lazar (the always good John Waters), it precipitates cascading events. Both Hodel and Chava similarly decide that who they love and where they live is more important than a traditional arranged marriage.
But how much tradition is Tevye prepared to forgo? Is his faith more important than love for a daughter? Change is coming, inexorably – and not least from the Tsar’s pogroms and forced dislocation.
A lot rides on these big musical productions and first night nerves are evident. Everyone is feeling their way a little for the first half hour, vocalisations a little tight, Sussman as much as anyone, missing some comedic beats that Stein’s fabulously witty book requires. But he gives us a warm and generous Tevye and soon everything begins to click. The potential for this production to really soar is clear.
While you wouldn’t call Fiddler a feminist tract – marriage is a given – these women are no pushovers. Perhaps they get it from their parents. Fishman finds Golde’s strength to match Tevye’s stubbornness, making her duet in Do You Love Me all the more touching.
As their independently minded daughters, Boltman, Ebbs and Plummer are all excellent, each displaying their character’s determination in their own way, utterly believable. Plummer also astonishes in a symbolic instrumental duet in Act 2, a fierce contest of future and tradition.
Tom Scutt’s set is a clever design that gives us wheatfields and a roof replete with the brilliant Ben Adler as the Fiddler. Adler weaves magic, a marker of tradition and continuity, in musical dialogue with Tevye’s thoughts. He moves sinuously around the set like he was born to it.
Under Dominic Woodhead’s conducting, the orchestra/band is tight, and Mark Aspinall’s musical direction highlights the qualities of Bock’s score.
Much of this production’s strength is in the detail: the care that’s taken to differentiate each member of the supporting cast; how the smoke envelopes the Fiddler without obscuring him; how the costuming’s muted colours that evoke Russian peasantry work in harmony with the autumnal lighting of the first act. Aideen Malone’s lighting, in fact, is a real force in this production, notably the burning wheatfields on interval.
Above everything, though, the choreography and ensemble singing is simply inspired. Tevye’s Dream of Grandma Tzeitel coming back from the dead is a (literal) scream, audaciously and hilariously staged.
By contrast, but no less effective, the Sabbath Prayer and The Wedding are contemplative and moving representations of faith. The iconic Bottle Dance is a breathless highwire act that had the audience cheering. And I felt shivers listening to the chorale, Anatevka, as the townspeople left for the unknown. Stunning.
If nothing else, Fiddler on the Roof celebrates three things: resilience, faith and love. None of these is necessarily specific to the Jewish diaspora, and indeed the production makes clear the universality of the refugee plight.
But on an opening night in Sydney with recent abhorrent events still reverberating, the sense of a community united is palpable. The final moments, where carefully calibrated lighting blurs the boundary between audience, cast and story, are poignant and pointed.
This production is not some musty museum piece revived for no discernible reason. It heaves with life and energy, is frequently funny, and poignant and sad, giving full expression to those wonderfully perdurable lyrics and music. It speaks to our time.
Fiddler on the Roof runs to 3 October at the Theatre Royal, 108 King Street Sydney. It then runs in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. See tour dates below.
Tickets for Sydney are available here.
Website: https://fiddlerontherooftour.com/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/fiddlerontherooftour/
Photo credits: Daniel Boud
2026 Australian Tour Dates:
Sydney on now until 3 October, Theatre Royal
Brisbane 9 – 25 October, Glasshouse Theatre, QPAC
Melbourne 31 October – 27 December, Her Majesty’s Theatre
Perth 7 – 31 January, His Majesty’s Theatre
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