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ON THE RECORD: A New London Fiddler and a Crossover West Side Story
By Steven Suskin
30 Sep 2007
This week's column discusses the new London cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof and a full-scale West Side Story geared to the crossover market.
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Fiddler on the Roof [Musical Associates Theatre]
There's a new Fiddler in town. London town, anyway. This is a traditional Fiddler, which should come as a relief after the last one we saw hereabouts. It is also an intimate one, which by all reports concentrates on the material — score and text — rather than on newly-imagined production concepts. Performed with a relatively intimate cast of 30 (down from the original 45), the goal seems to be to present Fiddler in the manner originally intended by the authors; while I have not seen it, I am told that the values of the piece come unhindered across the footlights and into the theatregoer's heart and tearducts. This viewpoint is supported by the new CD, released on the Musical Associates label. Lindsay Posner has directed, with the original Robbins choreography carefully recreated. [Disclaimer: I wrote the liner notes for this CD, although for that matter I also did the notes for the current release of the original Broadway cast album — the so-called "Broadway Deluxe Collector's Edition" of the original 1964 Zero Mostel cast album.]
Henry Goodman is the Tevye in question. Having seen so many Tevyes, going back to Zero Mostel and Luther Adler, it's impossible to judge the performance based on an audio recording alone; this role is not about the singing, it's about the acting. That said, Goodman seems to do very well. A showy Tevye he is not, nor an enigmatic or nouveau one; he sounds like a gentle papa, trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck. Goodman is best known hereabouts as the fellow who didn't replace Nathan Lane in The Producers, and that's perhaps an unfair association; as it turned out, Bialystock's shoes were especially hard to fill. Goodman proved a fine actor when he played here in the Roundabout's Tartuffe and as a replacement in Art. What's more, he was astoundingly good as Roy Cohn in Angels in America when it was mounted in 1992, prior to George Wolfe's Broadway version, at the National Theatre in London. Musical theatre fans know him from the original cast albums of the West End productions of City of Angels and Chicago.
It is not the Tevye that makes this CD so enjoyable. Nor is it the supporting cast, led by Beverley Klein as Golde. (Singing honors, by the way, go to Alexandra Silber as Hodel; her "Far from the Home I Love" is exceedingly lovely.) The original 25 pieces have been cut to ten, which sounds mighty foreboding. Here, though — for once — is a careful and highly effective reduction. Orchestrator Larry Blank has clearly studied Don Walker's originals, making necessary alterations but retaining all the key flavors of the 1964 charts.
Walker — who as Robbins's most frequent theatrical orchestrator was well aware of the director's tendency to snipe at and tamper with the orchestrations — consciously scored the show in such a manner that everything could be effectively played even if reduced to a quartet. For that reason, perhaps, Blank's orchestration sounds small but totally complete. This is almost a chamber music Fiddler, with every instrumentalist a soloist. Even with the reduced numbers, nothing seems to be missing; in fact it sounds enhanced. This new orchestration will apparently be offered as an option for stock and amateur licenses, and that's a promising development. These ten pieces sound wonderful, which is probably a testament to musical director Jae Alexander and his band (including some fine clarinet playing by Richard Addison).
A key element to the success of Blank's work is that he has retained the score's most important color — the accordion — and sensibly avoided synthesizers. Contrast this with the otherwise admirable 1995 Roundabout production of She Loves Me. Faced with a similar reduction in players, they saw fit to add two synthesizers at the expense of not only the accordion but the harp as well, robbing the orchestration of what should be a sense of immeasurably buoyant romance.
The new CD is currently available online, from the label or Dress Circle; it will presumably soon be more widely available. This Fiddler sounds so fine, in fact, that it almost makes you want to jump over to the Savoy, where the production has been playing since May. Continued...
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