Wonder of Wonders

August 26, 2013
After Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway in 1964, it became the longest-running show of its day, winning Tony Awards in nine categories in 1965. NPR called it one of the “100 most important American musical works of all time,” and the American Film Institute named the movie version one of the “100 most inspiring films of all times.” Long after Sholem Aleichem wrote a story in 1894 featuring Tevye the milkman, the tale about Jewish identity, the conflict between generations, and the deep importance of community and family lives on in several hundred annual theatrical performances by local theaters, and the movie version spawned numerous kitschy keepsakes as well as a MAD magazine parody. In this flat study, drama critic Solomon traces in exhaustive and exhausting detail the life of Aleichem’s story from its earliest production to its time on Broadway and subsequent movie version, covering its production and reception abroad as well. She carefully describes Jerome Robbins’s direction and choreography, and his brilliant casting of Zero Mostel as Tevye, as well as Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick’s (lyrics) contribution of such songs as “Sabbath’s Prayer,” “Tevye’s Dream,” and “Sunrise, Sunset” to the world of popular music. Although Solomon’s telling lacks cohesion, she nevertheless captures the fascination and wonder that Fiddler on the Roof continues to exert over us.

November 15, 2013
Raising the roof on one of the most successful and resonant works in the history of Broadway. Solomon (Arts and Culture/Columbia Univ. Graduate School of Journalism; Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender, 1997, etc.) presents a comprehensive history of the long-running and much-revived Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, the iconic production that broke box-office records, swept the Tony Awards, inspired a hit Hollywood movie, and, for many, defined and fixed the details of traditional Jewish life in the popular imagination. The author marshals impressive quantities of research to trace Fiddler's history, beginning with its origins in the writings of Sholem Aleichem, a prominent Yiddish writer whose late-19th-century stories about Tevye the dairyman, which portrayed shtetl life in a warmly realistic style, served as the source material for what would become the musical institution. The Tevye material was adapted over the ensuing decades with varying levels of success--Solomon scrupulously documents every permutation, which becomes a bit tiresome--eventually finding its way to Broadway in 1964 in the form of Fiddler on the Roof, shepherded by director and choreographer Jerome Robbins and starring comic force of nature Zero Mostel. The creation of the Broadway show provides the book's richest passages, as the anxious, insecure Robbins clashes with the obstreperous Mostel and a miraculous confluence of talents and personalities achieve the elusive alchemy of great theatrical art. The remainder of the narrative, which covers the show's adaptation into the successful film version and subsequent reimaginings--including a controversial staging at a black junior high in racially fraught late-1960s Brooklyn and an embattled Polish production in the early 2000s--serves as an illuminating but comparatively lackluster footnote. Solomon has done her homework; unfortunately, homework is what this worthy but dryly academic chronicle too often feels like. Everything a Fiddler fan could hope to learn but with little to entice general readers.

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Starred review from September 15, 2013

More than a cultural history of the extraordinarily popular Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, this wonderfully detailed and highly readable text also touches on Sholem Aleichem, the history of Yiddish theater, shtetl life, American politics, theater in the 1960s, and the roles of Jews in America in a post-World War II, post-McCarthy era. Theater critic Solomon's (dir., arts & culture concentration, MA program, Columbia Journalism Sch.; Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender) love for this iconic musical is evident throughout; she comments that "the greater sum that Fiddler's parts added up to went beyond the soul-stirring, radiant enchantment of even the best Broadway musicals." The book also details Fiddler's great success: within a decade of its 1964 opening, the musical had played in two dozen countries, and by the time of the release of the 1971 film, there had been 15 productions in Finland alone. Solomon sets the context for this landmark musical by examining New York City politics and race relations and the assimilation of the Jewish community in America at this time. A detailed, selective bibliography and notes will be an asset to scholars. VERDICT Although this work is thin on illustrations and pictures, the fascinating narrative more than compensates for the lack of visuals and is highly recommended for public libraries as well as for more specialized academic theater and Jewish history collections.--Herb Shapiro, Lifelong Learning Soc., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton

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