Supported by
Critic's Pick
‘Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles’ Review: Inside a Broadway … Tradition!
A fascinating love letter to “Fiddler on the Roof” asks: What makes the quintessentially Jewish musical speak to everyone?
- Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
- NYT Critic’s Pick
- Directed by Max Lewkowicz
- Documentary
- PG-13
- 1h 32m
Before “Fiddler on the Roof” became a Broadway classic and cultural touchstone, it was just a pretty bad idea. Who wants to see a musical about a Russian milkman marrying off his daughters before a pogrom?
One of the many virtues of the celebratory documentary “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles” is how it transports you to this early, nerve-racking gestation period. You hear a recording of the composer Jerry Bock telling the lyricist Sheldon Harnick about a new song he wrote, introducing it, as “ersatz Hasidic” and “bubbly and spirited and kind of kooky.” After a bashful chuckle, he plays the now-famous opening notes of “If I Were a Rich Man.” Juxtaposing this insecure-sounding pitch with the dizzying array of versions of this song presented all over the world is breathtaking.
Joel Grey, who directed the Yiddish revival currently playing in New York, articulates the central question this movie sets out to answer about the musical: “What is it that makes it speak in so many languages, and everybody thinks it’s about them?”
Max Lewkowicz’s documentary keeps reminding us of the multiple sources of inspiration for this quintessentially Jewish musical, from the paintings of Marc Chagall to the politics of the day. In early rehearsals, to help his cast understand what being Jewish in turn-of-the-century Russia was like, the director and choreographer Jerome Robbins had them re-enact scenarios that black people endured in the Jim Crow South. Robbins emerges as the most riveting figure, a cruel and demanding perfectionist, who, in the words of one commenter, “bludgeoned” the show into shape.
Lewkowicz recruits a terrific cast of talking heads that include famous fans (Stephen Sondheim, Lin Manuel Miranda) and artists who have worked on the show, like its producer, Hal Prince, who died in July.
“Fiddler” is at once timeless and a product of its time, but the extent to which it departed from its original source material, the Yiddish stories of Sholem Aleichem, goes mostly unexamined. The same goes for any serious grappling with criticism of the show or its film adaptation, but I never minded. Some shows deserve reverential treatment. And the love letter is, to use a word so associated with this show it influences the way many say it, tradition.
Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
Rated PG-13 for disturbing subject matter and matchmaking. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes.
Inside the World of Comedy
Kevin Hart became the 25th comic to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the Kennedy Center.
The joke writers for awards shows like the Oscars are a corner of the showbiz work force that tends to remain in the shadows. The job requires skill, self-awareness and even diplomacy.
Comedians, no strangers to tackling difficult and taboo subjects with humor, are increasingly turning their attention to the climate crisis.
Delivering a deluge of hard jokes, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler tried stand-up for the first time as a double act, aiming directly for the nostalgic pleasure centers of their fans.
Dave Chappelle assumes we’re already offended in his new Netflix special, “The Dreamer,” which predictably includes trans and disabled jokes.
Was a scandal the best thing to happen to Hasan Minhaj? It repositions him less as a righteous political comic than a more self-questioning, personal comic.
Advertisement