'Fiddler on the Roof' at The Playhouse Theatre

The new production of 'Fiddler on the Roof' was a sell out at the Menier Chocolate Factory and has now transferred to the Playhouse Theatre where we saw it last week. The theatre has been transformed into the village of Anatevka in the Ukraine with the seating re-arranged into a pathway winding through the stalls and the stage spilling out into the seating. It made for an interesting experience. I saw 'Fiddler' on Broadway in 2005 with Harvey Fierstein and Rosie O'Donnell in the lead roles so I've seen it before but don't have terribly good memories of it so I was interested to see what this production would be like.

It's the tale of Tevye and Golde and their five daughters during a period of change in Russia in the early 1900s and the Jewish pogroms. We meet the family and other villagers, like the matchmaker whose role is to find husbands and wives for the people of the village, the village butcher, the tailor and others. Tevye is keen to uphold the traditions he grew up with and regularly talks to God but his beliefs are challenged in a period of rapid change.

The match-maker finds a husband for his eldest daughter, Tzeitel, in the shape of the much older butcher Lazar Wolf but Tzeitel loves Motel the tailor. Tevye loves his daughter is won over to agreeing that his daughter can marry the tailor. His second daughter falls in love with a travelling bolshevik tutor and promises to marry him when he settles in Kiev and, once again Tevye relents and agrees to the match. His third daughter falls in love with a the son of a villager, a bookish gentile, and that is too much for him since his daughter cannot marry outside the faith and he disowns her, pushed too far.

There are moments of joy and sorrow as the tale progresses, and we see the marriage of the eldest daughter and the tailor gets his first sewing machine, we see his second daughter leave home to head to Siberia to join her beloved who has been arrested and imprisoned as a radical, and we see Golde turning away the matchmaker from making a match for the two youngest daughters. And then the local police issue the edict that all Jews must leave the village within three days and the villagers say their farewells and disperse, with Tevye and Golde heading to America while the eldest daughter and the tailor will save up money to join them at some point. The fate of the middle daughter is unknown since she's working in Siberia with her husband. There's a touching moment when the third daughter says farewell to her family and is ignored by her father. Her husband says that they too will leave the village since he does't want to live with such small minded people and, as they leave, her father quietly says 'God bless'. And the villagers all leave, carrying their worldly possessions to disperse to the four winds.

There are some touching moments in this production, directed by Trevor Nunn, and they seem to be the highlights of the show. I was surprised at how many of the songs I knew from Saturday evening variety shows in the late '60s and early '70s: 'Tradition', 'Matchmaker', 'If I Were A Rich Man', 'Sunrise, Sunset' and others. It's a very energetic show with lots of vigorous dancing and movement and that helps to highlight the quieter moments in the play.

The politics of the play are very current, with the Jewish community cowed and careful around their gentile neighbours who have all the power, Hodel prepared to travel by herself to the wastes of Siberia to marry her lover and, at the end, the entire community becoming migrants through no choice of their own, forced to seek new lives wherever they can. These are all essential parts of the play and not highlighted in any way but the parallels are there with what's happening in the world at the moment.

I wasn't sure what to expect but I liked this production, full of life and joy and sorrow, lots of laughs with big singing and dancing, telling the age-old stories of a family and a community. I liked the pairing of Andy Nyman as Tevye and Judy Kuhn as Golde who worked well together. I also liked Harriet Bunton as Hodel, the second sister, who brought her very touching sorrow and hope to the scene when she leaves for Siberia, and Dermot Canavan as old curmudgeon Lazar Wolf who makes peace with Tevye at the end. Louise Gold was also fun as the matchmaker who own't let you get a word in edgeways and decides to go to the Holy Land when they're forced to leave the village. I also liked the design of the production, the staging and lighting which were very effective.

Y'know, part of me wants to know what happened next. Did Hodel ever come back from Siberia with a tribe of children around her? How did Tevye survive the constant change of living in America and did he still talk to God? What happened to the matchmaker as she travelled across Russia and Europe and did she make it to the Holy Land. Or maybe not since we know that a world war awaited them, with a revolution and the dangers that brought, and then another world war and death camps. It probably wouldn't be a happy ending for most of the characters.

If you want a good night out you could do a lot worse than visit Anatevka for a few hours and have your spirits raised by watching life unfolding in front of you.

'Hangmen' at Wyndham's Theatre

So, the first play of 2016 was the cheerily titled 'Hangmen' about the last hangmen in the UK in the early 1960s. What a joyful way to start the year you might think but, despite the subject matter (and content, to be honest) it was actually quite fun. It's a comedy, y'see, even though it's rather on the dark side. You won't necessarily get that from the poster of dangling feet advertising the show, but trust me, there are many laugh out loud moments and I laughed along with the sold out audience the other night.

It opens with one of the last hangings of a young man who everyone agrees is 'nice' but is to be hanged anyway. Fast forward to after the abolition of the death penalty and the hangman is now a pub landlord in Oldham (why Oldham? I've got no idea except it provides the opportunity for comedy accents). We meet the wife and daughter, the regular patrons including the local police inspector when a journalist appears to seek the hangman's views on the new law abolishing the death penalty.  What's to become of the country now that we can't legally kill people?

It's the early 60s and a trendy Londoner turns up with his southern Cockney ways and not long after the hangman's assistant appears. He'd been sacked earlier for mentioning the size of one of their clients' genitals when they were preparing him for burial - after that the word 'cock' was frequently mentioned and referred to in various ways (there's nothing like a cock joke to get the laughs). It gets darker when the hangman's teenage daughter goes missing - could the Cockney have anything to do with it? The hangman's rival for the title of 'last and greatest hangman' turns up because he's been slagged off in a newspaper article and clearly dominates the pub and stage, including getting everyone to (slowly) sniff his hair! The laughs keep coming and the Cockney is accidentally hanged (well, these things happen) and life goes on…

Despite it's rather grim subject matter it was actually great fun and characters change with the circumstances. David Morrisey was great fun as the domineering hangman brought to heel by his rival played by John Hodgkinson. I also liked Johnny Flynn as the Cockney interloper and Andy Nyman as the former assistant. I also liked the set and subtle lighting, moving from the prison cell for the first five minutes or so to the traditional old pub for the remainder of the show.