It is a ‘fantastic night out’, insists the theatre’s artistic director. Gemma Bodinetz is right, of course, but it is easy to see how those unfamiliar with Fiddler on the Roof might take some convincing. The first act ends with a pogrom, the second with the village’s Jews being expelled from
the country. This doesn’t immediately suggest an evening of joyous, life-affirming entertainment.
‘It’s the story of people being forced to leave their homes by the powers that be, and that scenario, sadly, is still playing itself out all over the world today. But it’s also about family and joy and love and it has terrific songs,’ says Bodinetz. It opens the first season of Liverpool Everyman’s new repertory company later this month.
Loosely based on short stories by the Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof — the title comes from a recurring image in the paintings of Marc Chagall — is set in a shtetl in tsarist Russia in 1905.
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