Fiddler on the Roof – Seattle, May 26, 2010 by YFA
I’m going to watch another musical tonight and I suddenly realized I didn’t write a review for the last musical I watched :).
A little background on the musical if you haven’t heard of it: Fiddler held the record for the longest-running Broadway musical for almost 10 years until Grease surpassed its run. It was nominated for ten Tony Awards (1965), winning nine, including Best Musical, score, book, direction and choreography.
I didn’t do my pre-study for this musical as I was rather busy planning for my Yellowstone trip, and was slightly surprised to again see Jerome Robbins as the choreographer – this makes the 4th musical in a row that I saw with him as the choreographer (South Pacific, On the Town, Anna and the King, Fiddler on the Roof). Granted, he is an amazing choreographer – and that really shows in the large dance numbers in this musical.
Being another old musical, it was quite long (just over 3 hours I think, with intermission). The plot was set in 1905 in Russia and talks about the lives of Russian Jews, so culturally and musically I did not connect. (It makes me wonder if non-Asians have the same problem when they watch more Oriental plays like Anna and the King). The only song I knew from Fiddler was “Sunrise, Sunset”, which to my surprise was a wedding song for the play 😐 (it is in a minor key).
The house was more packed than I expected and so I guess the play itself is rather popular – either that or people are present to see Harvey Fierstein, who is a very lively actor. The production was solid, but I did not enjoy it as much as some other musicals – just not my taste I guess.
2.5 TP rolls for me: 
