Fiddler in Yiddish gets first pro staging in U.S.

Steven Skybell plays the role of Tevye in a Yiddish-language production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York earlier this month. Although the landmark musical is based upon stories whose characters spoke Yiddish, Fiddler has never before been performed in Yiddish in the United States until now.
Steven Skybell plays the role of Tevye in a Yiddish-language production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York earlier this month. Although the landmark musical is based upon stories whose characters spoke Yiddish, Fiddler has never before been performed in Yiddish in the United States until now.

NEW YORK -- Yiddish was the language spoken by Tevye the milk peddler and the other shtetl characters depicted in the stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof, yet in this country the landmark musical has never been performed professionally in that savory and supple tongue. Until now.

On Sunday, Fiddler, first produced in 1964 on Broadway and for a time its longest-running musical, will have its Yiddish-language premiere at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, which is also the home of the century-old National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene.

The production is directed by Joel Grey, who does not speak Yiddish, and performed by a cast of 26, three-quarters of whom also do not speak the language.

A Yiddish speaker might wonder if someone had gotten farblondjet -- goofed or become lost and confused. But the decision, it turns out, was artistically deliberate.

In auditioning some 700 actors, Grey and the other creators emphasized theatrical experience and talent over fluency. That forced them to spend several weeks before and during rehearsals getting all aboard to pronounce the Yiddish words correctly, with intonations that capture that lost world's context and flavor.

Just to underscore his approach, during rehearsals Grey put up an 8-foot by 6-foot banner that read: "Fiddish Spoken Here."

"Acting was of primary importance to me," said Grey, who is 86 and best known as the devilish Weimar-era Emcee in the stage and screen productions of Cabaret a half-century ago.

"I was looking for great acting and singers who were right for the part, and then they had to pass muster with the Yiddishists." (Although Grey's father was Mickey Katz, known for such zany Yiddish-spritzed parodies of American songs as "Duvid Crockett: the King of Delancey Street," he and his childhood friends spoke English.)

To make the show work, the actors were given an unconventionally formatted script, with each line of dialogue appearing in three forms: in the transliterated Yiddish adaptation written by Shraga Friedman, a native of pre-World War II Warsaw, for a 1965 Israeli production; in the literal word-by-word English meaning of the Yiddish; and in the words of the original English production that had a book by Joseph Stein, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.

Grey had the actors perform the roles in English first, then in their still-unpolished Yiddish. Motl Didner, the Folksbiene's associate artistic director, provided recordings in Yiddish and Dropbox files for each actor's part so the performers could learn to properly handle the language's inflections. Similar techniques are used with opera singers who do not speak, say, Italian or German.

The entire process had to be completed in barely three weeks of Yiddish coaching and four weeks of rehearsals. The first preview was July 4; the show is scheduled to run through Sept. 2. If a standing ovation at a recent preview was any measure, audiences seem to relish the result.

For one thing, English and Russian translations are projected on two panels flanking the stage, so those who don't speak Yiddish can follow along easily. And no matter the language, the musical still conveys its poignant themes: the tension between tribal loyalty and the need to break free, the convulsive impact on families of romantic love, the pain of separation whether compelled by personal choices or a cruel government.

Indeed, Grey and Christopher Massimine, the Folksbiene's executive director, said the play, which ends with the expulsion of Jews from their Russian village and the emigration of Tevye's family to America, resonates with contemporary events at the Mexican border and in Washington.

"One Russian woman told me afterward, 'This happened to my family and it's happening again,'" Massimine said.

In the Yiddish version, the opening song is still called "Tradition" but Tevye emphasizes that it is adherence to Torah, not just tradition, that has enabled the Jewish people to survive through the ages. "If I Were a Rich Man" is rendered as "If I Were a Rothschild," both to accommodate the rhyme scheme and pay homage to the actual title of an Aleichem story.

The Yiddish version contains words like "Gevalt!" -- an exclamation of shock or fright -- instead of the more universal "Help!" "Bubbe meise," a grandmother's fable, replaces the English "old wives' tale." Rather than the bland "Sabbath dish," Tevye mentions "tsimmes," a sweet carrot stew eaten on the Jewish Sabbath that has become a synonym for a big fuss.

And Yente the matchmaker talks of marriage candidates who are "azoyns un azelekhes," which literally means "such and such" but is a particular expression for something special and out of this world.

"You're really getting transported to that time and place through that language," said Jackie Hoffman, who plays Yente. A veteran of television and films, she was raised in New York's Queens borough, but picked up very little Yiddish from conversations between her mother and grandmother.

Steven Skybell, a Texas-reared Broadway veteran who plays Tevye, learned a smattering of Yiddish by taking courses. It's not his first Fiddler; he was the butcher Lazar Wolf in the 2015 English-language Broadway revival.

"The Yiddish has much more muscularity," he said. "It goes deeper in two ways. It goes down to the earth and tells you what it means to be a Jew in 1905 Russia and it goes up to God. It's much more visceral."

photo

The New York Times/SARA KRULWICH

Cast members stage a Yiddish-language production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in New York.

Religion on 07/21/2018

Upcoming Events