Ben Sandomir and Jeni Hacker in Zoetic Stage’s reconceived Fiddler on the Roof (Photos by Morgan Sofia Photography)
By Bill Hirschman
No, Zoetic Stage’s production is not yet another Fiddler on the Roof.
Yes, it’s the same script and score to the point you know the punchlines and lyrics so well you have to fight the urge to sing along.
The challenge of a successful revival of Fiddler is that nearly every theatergoer has seen it at least once—more likely two or three times plus the Norman Jewison film with Topol.
But Zoetic Stage’s re-imagined production infused with joy has imagination, power, vitality and a freshness that gifts you as if you’re almost seeing it for the first time. Yet, the spirit, the messages of the original classic remain intact, even underscored.
And far more crucial at this moment, its inherent themes written in 1964 about 1905 Russia seem ripped from 2025’s podcasts with deafening resonances.
The echoes envelop antisemitism, fascist dictatorship, social responsibility, Russian powermongers, the value of community, ingrained tradition now at risk, the cost of ignoring what’s happening around you, the plight of evicted refugees seeking America as a potential haven, indeed, the tragic plight of refugees in general. Kiev is mentioned in passing.
But overwhelmingly, Fiddler has always been and certainly now depicts ordinary people struggling to deal with a world significantly changing under their feet. It neither endorses nor condemns optimism nor pessimism nor any other approach; it just documents. Mostly, the citizens of Anatevka are pragmatists.
And since you’ve seen it before, no spoiler alert, they face the dislocation with a strange meld of acceptance of misfortune as an innate reality of life, but with an unquenchable movement forward albeit with a limp.
Amplifying this to a degree that a show under a broad proscenium has difficulty achieving is that Zoetic uses a thrust stage surrounded on three sides by the audience no more than few yards away. The intimacy in the 250-seat Carnival Studio Theater of the Adrienne Arsht Center draws the audience inside the community, nearly face to face with characters indulging in their humor, celebrating that joy and baring their emotions. In the wedding scene, the captivated audience begins to snap fingers and clap along with the characters.
The production’s virtues are lengthy starting with the overall reconceiving by ingenious director Stuart Meltzer, skilled musical direction by Caryl Fantel, a committed cast of 11 that seem like 30, raft of designers and workers, and, most notably, the superb choreography of Sandra Portal-Andreu, whose work has graced stages across the county.
On a nearly bare round central portion of the set, she fills the space with a celebration of residents circling, lines intersecting, striding with their feet pounding and their arms waving in the air with enthusiastic delight.
And, of course, in the you-haven’t-seen-a-Fiddler-like-this ingredient, there are the puppets. Really. They are far from simply a way to contain the budget and the compact cast size.
Instead, Zoetic and has maximized the opportunity for imagination and artistry in suffusing their use. Designed by Brazilian-American sculptor Natasha Lopes Hernandez, the life-sized figures can be comical, they can increase the size and diversity of the community, they can even pose solemn danger. They never seem like a distracting joke although a few of them are open-jawed like those in Avenue Q. Most memorably is how an identical line of tall identical figures provides the prancing Russian soldiers needed for the usual dance-off in the “To Life” Lazar Wolf tavern scene.
Which backs into the generous praise for the entire cast who are assigned specific community members, but slip in and out of another by altering posture and voice, and then merge into the community ensemble at large. When they join in a group number, the sound bounces off the lighting grid.
The Ben Sandomir seen as the troubled father in Next To Normal, the smooth hustler in Honeymoon in Vegas or the murderous Sweeney Todd has vanished into the delightful Tevye. His impoverished milkman is your next-door neighbor. He is trying to provide for a family slipping away as the world he has learned to stay afloat in now begins to unravel around him. His full-throated voice is rife with dark humor and deep affection and significant angst.
Most Tevyes we’ve seen or heard have had a slight Eastern European accent or one of Eastern Bronx or Brooklyn. Sandomir makes no attempt at those. It’s an American voice doing “If I Were a Rich Man,” but that works in the universality aspect of the musical. His Tevye captures from the moment his powerful voice welcomes the audience to Anatevka leading the community with “Tradition.”
Step for step, Jeni Hacker, one of the region’s finest actresses, unafraidly embraces wife Golde’s hard-headed practicality as her way of coping with the increasing chaos around them. She and Sandomir played a very different couple in Zoetic’s Next to Normal.
As the three sisters (the other two are puppets) Shayna Gilberg, Emma Friedman and Caila Katz bring life to their characters, especially Katz’s yearning in “Far From The Home I Love.”
Sara Grant delivers a kaleidoscope of personages but memorably the non-stop babbling railroad Yente. David B. Friedman is Motel, Henry Gainza is Lazar Wolf, Nate Promkul is Perchik, Kalen Edean is Fyedka and Jonathan Eisele delivers among other moments the single agile bottle dancer.
The onstage band led by Fantel only has seven players, but she has re-orchestrated the score and led the them into a full sound. Her troupe include Jyllian Brown, keyboard; Orin Jacobs, woodwinds; Kate Harmann, trumpet; Liuba Ohrimenci, violin; Jason Pyle, trombone, and Roy Fantel, drums-percussion
The costuming by Lenora Nitikin was replete with colorful swirling dresses, head scarfs and multi-patterned blouses, plus men’s clothes showing the erosion of the workaday world. The environment was enhanced with Eric Nelson’s lighting and Dan Meyer’s sound effects. True, on opening night, the sound level of voices, music and angry speeches could likely be heard in Coconut Grove, but that underscored the strength of emotion and covered the reduced personnel, but was it ever loud.
Staging is on a bare floor and hovels’ wooden slats in the background. It also uses the entrances from the aisles of the audience leading to the thrust stage.
Like many 1960s musicals, it’s a bit longer than today’s 90-minute no intermission spectaculars, but also like the 1960s shows, the evening is engaging just be prepared for a 1 hour 35-minute first act, then and 50-minute second act after intermission. Some editions scrimp by cutting one or more of the songs; this one, thankfully, is complete.
Thankfully, the production is open three more weeks. You might find yourself choking up although you know the show by heart.
Fiddler on the Roof from Zoetic Stage plays through April 6 at the Carnival Studio Theater as part of the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Theater Close Up series, at 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Performances 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, and 2:30 p.m. Saturday on April 5. Running time opening night was 1 hours 40 minutes, an intermission, then 50 minutes. Price $66 – $76. Visit https://tinyurl.com/48hrauhc or call (305) 949-6722
