Where the Music Never Ends
“Tradition!” by Barbara Isenberg, available from St. Martin’s Press The Norris Theatre presents “Fiddler on the Roof” for three weekends Tomorrow evening, the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” opens at the Norris Theatre for 11 performances, a decent run by local standards. However, when the show opened on Broadway in 1964 it was an unstoppable phenomenon that didn’t step off the stage until nearly eight years later, the curtain having gone up and down 3,300 times. No other Broadway musical had lasted that long, and “Fiddler” would continue to hold its longevity record for over seven years. Longevity, and ticket sales, are of course dubious indicators of quality, but “Fiddler on the Roof” not only had the right ingredients, it had the right personnel to put it together and bring it to life: librettist Joseph Stein, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and composer Jerry Bock, plus choreographer and director Jerome Robbins who hammered it into shape. “Fiddler on the Roof,” with its Marc Chagall-inspired title, is based on the short stories of Sholem Aleichem, who was famous in his time (just like most of us today) but then largely forgotten after his death in 1916. The work is set in Anatevka, a…
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