Lyrics & Lyricists: To Life! Celebrating 50 Years of Fiddler on the Roof
Lyrics & Lyricists
To Life! Celebrating 50 Years of Fiddler on the Roof with Sheldon Harnick
92nd Street Y, NYC, June 1, 2015
Reviewed by Joel Benjamin for Cabaret Scenes
The finale to this season’s prestigious 92Y Lyrics & Lyricists was the superb To Life! Celebrating 50 Years of Fiddler on the Roof with Sheldon Harnick. Lyricist Harnick hosted the evening. At 91, he is amazing: personable, witty and in fine voice (despite claiming to have laryngitis). In 1964 he joined with composer Jerry Bock and librettist Joseph Stein to create this classic musical. What was, however, was a phantom Fiddler playlist, 21 songs cut from the show for one reason or another.
Several, like “Now I Have Everything,” “Letters from America” and “Somehow the Time Will Pass” were re-purposed into songs that remained in the score. Some, like “A Butcher’s Soul,” “Dear, Sweet Sewing Machine,” and the lyric to “Peppercorn,” were eliminated because they didn’t work, despite their obvious qualities.
“Any Day Now,” written for the character of Perchik in the 1971 film, was so badly sung that it was cut. Ross Lekites, however, is a splendid singer and did justice to the song about Perchik’s vision of a future free from tyrants of all kinds.
The show’s original opening number was the charmingly domestic “We’ve Never Missed a Sabbath Yet,” here sung by Judy Blazer, Kerry Conte and Leah Horowitz, all fine singing actors. The shtetl anthem “Tradition” replaced it at Jerome Robbins’s advice. Harnick made it clear that it was Robbins’s commitment to honor his family’s shtetl past that eventually gave Fiddler its richness and form. In effect, Robbins was the fourth creator of the show.
It was fun to hear early versions of well-known song situations, like “To Marry for Love,” sung by Tevye’s daughters imagining marriage. Of course, it was replaced by “Matchmaker.”
A great loss was “When Messiah Comes,” a gently sardonic plea for salvation, which was sung by Harnick. He found every nuance in his words and Bock’s music.
A bearded Jonathan Hadary was an exemplary Tevye. Alan Schmuckler was a delight in everything he sang, but particularly in Motel, the Tailor’s “You Could Have the Richest Man in Town” (replaced later by “Miracle of Miracles”) and a number with the melody we know as “Now I Have Everything”— “Peppercorn” — about how Perchik got this strange nickname.
The show was blessed with the presence of Rob Fisher as artistic and musical director who led Antoine Silverman (violin), Andrew Sterman (clarinet), Dick Sarpola (bass) and Erik Charleston (percussion) in his Klezmer-inflected arrangements.
Category: Cabaret Reviews, New York City, New York City Cabaret Reviews
