Fiddler on the Roof is a fun musical, that it also filled with emotion. With lively songs and dances, and a good storyline, it’s a good show. Here’s my Fiddler on the Roof theatre review.
Overview and Plot synopsis of Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is set in the small Jewish village of Anatevka in Tsarist Russia during the early 20th century. The story centers on Tevye, a poor milkman who tries to maintain his religious and cultural traditions in the face of sweeping social change. My Fiddler on the Roof theatre review will give a few plot spoilers, but there aren’t any big plot twists in this show so it’s fine to know the plot before seeing the show.
Tevye lives with his wife Golde and their five daughters. The show opens with the ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, playing his violin on a raised platform above the stage. The “fiddler” is a metaphor for the precarious balance Tevye and his community must strike between tradition and survival.
Tevye sings about the importance of the Jewish traditions in his community. In their village, there is a matchmaker who finds spouses for the people in the village. The show follows the story of Tevye’s three oldest daughters, as they grow up and begin to challenge the customs of arranged marriage.
The controversial choices of the daughters
Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, defies tradition by choosing to marry her childhood friend Motel, a poor tailor, instead of the wealthy butcher Lazar Wolf. Tevye at first resists the match, but then reluctantly agrees, moved by their love. He invents a ‘dream’ to help convince his wife that they should allow their eldest daughter to marry for love.
Later, the second daughter Hodel begings to fall in love with Perchik. Perchik is a radical student who is tutoring the daughters, introducing new ideas about equality and justice. Again, Tevye is initially reluctant to approve the marriage, but in the end is persuaded to give them his permission and his blessing.
The greatest challenge comes when Chava, Tevye’s third daughter, marries a man who is not Jewish. Fyedka is a Russian Orthodox Christian. This union crosses a line Tevye cannot accept, and he disowns her, heartbroken.
The rising political tensions
Throughout the show, the political tension between the Jewish community and the Russians grows. There are anti-Jewish ‘demonstrations’, including one at Tzeital’s wedding. And Hodel’s husband, the radical student Perchik, is arrested and sent to Siberia. Hodel chooses to follow him, saying goodbye to her family.
The villagers of Anatevka are eventually forced to leave their homes due to a government order to expel all the Jews, and the community is scattered as they move on to different places. Tevye and his family prepare to emigrate to America, clinging to hope and faith.
What I liked about Fiddler on the Roof
Overall, I enjoyed Fiddler on the Roof the musical on stage. It was a fun, energetic and enjoyable show.
Plot, emotion and humour
I enjoyed the plot of Fiddler on the Roof. It was easy to follow on stage, and I liked the stories of the three oldest daughters as they fought against tradition and married for love. There are some nice emotional moments between the daughters and their father, as he struggles with his conflicted feelings of wanting his daughters to be happy while also maintaining the Jewish traditions. There was also a really nice scene between Tevye and his wife as they acknowledged that, after 25 years together, they did love each other.
I really liked Tevye’s character. He was really funny, with a lot of quick-witted lines. There was a lot of humour in the show. Some of the humour was almost slapstick comedy – especially from Motel. And other comedy was quick witted lines, such as when Tevye thought that Lazar wanted to buy his cow when actually Lazar was asking to marry his daughter. The style of comedy felt slightly old fashioned, like you’d get in TV sitcoms from the 1960s. It was a nice, innocent humour that worked well on stage and the audience was laughing throughout the show. The matchmaker was also a funny character.
Songs and dances
I also really enjoyed the songs and the dances in Fiddler on the Roof. The music is fun and jolly, with a lot of chorus songs where all the cast join in with the songs and dances. It’s definitely feel-good music. The opening song ‘Tradition’ is great, and then the ‘Matchmaker’ song is a real highlight of the show. The song where Tevye sings about money, called ‘If I were a rich man’ felt similar to the song ‘Money, Money, Money’ in Mamma Mia. And the ‘Sabbath Prayer’ was a really beautiful moment, where the whole cast came together.
There’s some excellent dancing in the show as well. A real highlight is a dance during Tzeitel’s wedding, where five men dance with wine bottles balanced on their hats. It’s really impressive. There are lots more lively dances, at the wedding and also in the scene in the pub. The dances really add to the feel-good vibe of the majority of this musical.
Staging, set and costumes
One of my favourite parts of this show was how they staged the ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. There was a platform that was raised and lowered above the main stage. On this platform, surrounded by corn fields, the fiddler would perform. I really liked how they managed to have a ‘roof’ on the stage for the fiddler. And the violin player was fantastic. He was in lots of other scenes as well, playing on the main stage as well as on the roof.
The rest of the set on the main stage was good as well. I liked the corn fields and the milk cart – it really felt like you were in a rural village in the early 1900s in Russia. The costumes were good as well, and felt very fitting to the time period and location. You could get a sense of the poverty and also the resilience of the villagers. The only downside to the costumes was that they were fairly similar for most of the characters, so if you were sat at the back of the theatre it could sometimes be a bit difficult to tell apart some of the characters, especially the daughters. But the costumes were still good and very fitting for the time period and location.
What I wasn’t so sure about
I enjoyed Fiddler on the Roof, and my Fiddler on the Roof theatre review is mostly positive. But I left the theatre feeling slightly confused about the genre of the show. There was just something about the plot and themes, and the style of music and humour, that didn’t quite fit together for me.
On the one hand, Fiddler on the Roof is a fun, feel-good musical. There’s a lot of humour, especially from Tevye. There are a lot of funny moments, and the audience was laughing. This works well with a lot of the plot, especially the parts of the plot that explore Tevye’s daughters and their defiant relationships. There’s humour when Tevye is persuaded to change his mind to accept his daughters’ choices of husbands, and some fun and lively songs and dances at the wedding and in the pub.
The darker side
However, there’s another side to the musical Fiddler on the Roof. And this side is a lot darker. And I struggled to fit this darker side with the light-hearted jolly humour. The darker side of Fiddler on the Roof deals with the persecution of the Jews in 20th century Europe. This theme first comes out strongly at the end of Act One, where the wedding is interrupted by a ‘demonstration’ – a pogrom.
And in Act Two, the show gets even darker. At the end of the show, the Jewish community are forced to leave their village that they have all called home. One daughter follows her husband to a prison camp in Siberia. And anyone with a basic knowledge of history will know how few people survived the prison camps in the harsh Siberian winters. The rest of the Jewish community from the village are scattered around the world. Some talk about going to Krakow or other European cities – places where we all know what happened to Jewish people in the 1940s under Nazi rule. It was an incredibly sad ending, seeing these characters that we’ve all become fond of, being forced to leave and go to places where we know, from our own knowledge of history, that they probably wouldn’t survive.
Does this fit together?
I found the emotional ending of the show really jarring, when juxtaposed with the jolly, feel-good songs, dances and vibes of the musical. To me, it just didn’t fit together. Even now, when I’m writing this section of the review, I’m really struggling to listen to the soundtrack from the musical – because the songs are so jolly, and I can’t listen to music like that when writing about the persecution of Jewish people in 20th century Europe. For me, it just doesn’t fit together.
There are even some jokes in the show that didn’t fit well for me. At the beginning of the first half, there’s a joke about why Jewish people wear hats, and the joke is they don’t know why, it’s just tradition. But at the end of the second half, the joke is referenced again – and it’s said that Jewish people wear hats because they’re always on the move. This is just one example of how the jokes and humour didn’t quite fit with the serious emotional undertones of the show.
I often enjoy shows that mix serious subjects with humour. But for me, this show didn’t get it quite right. The overwhelmingly jolly songs and dances and humour just didn’t work with the incredibly sad ending, where we know what horrors the characters were about to endure.
Would I recommend Fiddler on the Roof the musical
I enjoyed Fiddler on the Roof the musical on stage. My Fiddler on the Roof theatre review is mostly positive, so I would recommend it. The majority of the show is fun, with great set, great songs and dances, and some nice storylines. However, I’m still struggling to work out the genre of this musical given the incredibly sad ending, and how that ending works with the upbeat feel of the rest of the show. Maybe it fits together for some people, but I’m struggling to make it fit together.
Hope you enjoyed my Fiddler on the Roof theatre review! Check out my other theatre reviews for more shows in the West End, across the UK and the world.
