Fiddler on the Roof: Douglas Sills and Jeremy Radin – Photo: Daniel Rader
As director Joe Calarco put it to the press night audience at Signature Theatre’s Fiddler on the Roof, he had a simple pitch for what would become his twentieth Signature production.
For his Fiddler, Calarco — whose 2017 Jesus Christ Superstar at the Northern Virginia theater still ranks as tops among the handful I’ve seen — envisioned a table in the round. The family table, the community table, where so much that matters in life happens, would serve as the center for this telling of the musical composed by Jerry Bock, with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein.
Realized handsomely in Misha Kachman’s woody scenic design, the table, actually multiple tables in various configurations, also serves as stage and floor and tavern bar, depending on the scene. Meals, meetings, toasts, dances, fateful reckonings all sit down at — or spring from — this earthy center of the tiny village Anatevka, home to dairyman Tevye, his hard-working wife Golde, their five daughters, and community of fellow Jews.
Calarco and Signature nabbed a commanding performer to head the table: Douglas Sills, Broadway staple, Tony nominee, and, of late, a Gilded Age chef gracing the finest tables in 1880s New York. A far cry from Fifth Avenue, Tevye and family endure a life of scarcity in 1905 Russia, and, though Sills looks a bit dashing for a poor milkman, he conveys Tevye’s appreciation for the treasures he does possess: his family and his traditions.
The entire cast of villagers extol those virtues in “Tradition,” the first of the show’s opening trifecta of well-known tunes, and our first chance to take in the smooth staging of this large, active cast, and fetching choreography set for them by Sarah Parker.
Fiddler on the Roof: Rosie Jo Neddy – Photo: Daniel Rader
“Tradition” also spells out the strict expectations for women in this culture of arranged marriages. The three eldest of Tevye’s daughters — Tzeitel (Beatrice Owens), Hodel (Lily Burka), and Chava (Rosie Jo Neddy) — sing of romance and resistance in “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” a fine showcase for Burka’s lovely voice and Owens’ spunky Tzeitel.
The first of Tevye’s daughters to defy tradition, Tzeitel turns up her nose at a proposed union with wealthy town butcher Lazar Wolf (Jeremy Radin) arranged by the village matchmaker, Yente (Susan Rome, a fast-talking delight). One after the other, Tevye’s children will similarly defy him. He sees the balance of his whole world under threat, from within and without.
In his household, he has to deal with willful daughters, and the men they attract or bring home. Beyond his front door, the village of Anatevka, and the peaceful lives of Jews there, are threatened by the forces of the tsar, expelling Jews from their villages throughout the region.
The production hits its most resonant notes, however, when evoking the joy and celebration rooted in home and community, and religion. From the tender blessing of the Tevye-led “Sabbath Prayer,” to the boisterously danced “To Life,” the cast shines when it’s all hands on deck for uplifting occasions.
It’s wine bottles perched atop hats for the spirited quartet dancing the first-act showstopper “The Wedding,” a number epitomizing the show’s dynamite combo of cast, score, set, costumes, and choreography, especially when the mood’s upbeat.
The dancing throughout — to my surprise, at least — impresses in ways that the singing doesn’t, with a few exceptions, including the robustly romantic act two opener “Now I Have Everything,” sung by Burka’s devoted Hodel and Ariel Neydavoud’s revolutionary Perchik.
A modern free-thinker and, per Neydavoud’s impassioned performance, an appealing foil for Tevye, student Perchik is branded a radical by the men in the village. He turns out to be a key agent of change, both welcome and not, in the lives of Tevye and his family. Along with their community, they all suffer persecution, are brutalized by pogroms, and, ultimately, expelled from their homes, one passage in the show that feels played by rote, unfortunately.
“We don’t bother them, and so far they don’t bother us,” Tevye offers at the start, unaware what tremendous change awaits. Sills marks the man’s fight against — and yielding to — those battering winds with a genuine vulnerability which permeates Tevye’s duet with Golde, “Do You Love Me?”, informs his sometimes harsh methods of parenting, and solidifies his seat at the head of this table, both strong and sturdily built.
Fiddler on the Roof (★★★☆☆) runs through Jan. 25 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, with a Pride Night performance on Dec. 5. Tickets are $47 to $172. Call 703-820-9771, or visit sigtheatre.org.
Douglas Sills loves to laugh. It's a big laugh, hearty and life-affirming. And it -- along with a warm, impossibly broad smile -- blankets a conversation with him in warmth and comfort. The laugh bursts forth at unexpected moments, such as when the actor, known for stints on Broadway and as French chef (revealed to be a Kansas cook) Monsieur Baudin on HBO's The Gilded Age, is asked if he has ever been part of a play that's gone terribly wrong.
"I don't have a disaster in my head offhand," he grins. "Do I? I don't. Maybe it's because you go to work every day for months and you're pouring your heart and soul into it, you're there for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, and you're giving up everything to do it, and it's not a high-paying thing. And so you drink the Kool-Aid -- you have to. And so maybe that's why it doesn't feel like a disaster to me." He pauses. "But I've seen some disasters."
Supposedly inhabiting the same world as the film franchise, Levi Holloway’s play Paranormal Activities gives “crowd-pleaser” a bad name. Where the films brought top-notch terror to HGTV homes and the people who love them, this spin-off may have some clever stagecraft, but it can’t hide the fact that it’s an inch deep and an inch wide. In between a few quality jump-scares (at least by theatrical standards), this is a paper-thin story about a couple who are about as interesting as a pair of Hydro Flasks bouncing around in a backpack.
There’s certainly potential here. A young American couple lands in a London house where they feel alone and isolated. Lou (Cher Alvarez) is quickly revealed to be psychically (and possibly psychologically) unsettled, while James (Travis A. Knight) is the kind of guy who thinks minimizing things will keep the lid on life. But unlike the films, where the pool-noodle realism created an entirely novel home for horror, everything here is so short-handed, there’s simply no sense of a real place where God-awful things are happening.
On a rainy night inside a nondescript church basement, eight strangers gather in a support group for addicts struggling with digital dependency. Actually, at the outset of Octet, Dave Malloy's a cappella chamber musical presented in the round at Studio Theatre, seven in the group have already arrived, each stowing away their cell phone. But one of the eight chairs sits empty.
The eighth in this eclectic octet, a young woman, Velma (Amelia Aguilar), enters slightly late, seemingly unsure about her place here, or whether she's prepared to add her voice to the chorus of confessions. Whatever her reservations, she is not initially one with the group. Will that change over the course of these 100 minutes? We have a hunch.
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