How Classic Musicals Are Being Reimagined Off-Broadway
See fresh takes on Fiddler on the Roof, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and Carmen Jones
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“It’s about going back and looking at the material in a fresh way,” explains Doyle. “I’m doing this piece in the round, with the audience on four sides. Most classic musicals were made for the proscenium arch, so it’s been freeing and interesting to explore it in a different spatial way that affects how it’s told. I’m also using a company of ten. I’m sure it was 40 or so when it was originally done. We only have dressing rooms that seat ten so you have to rethink the way the work is made.”
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“I absolutely love the music in this show,” says Moore, who became a fan of the score when she heard original On a Clear Day star John Cullum singing a few of the tunes back in the ’80s. “We were acting in Private Lives together and he used to sing ‘Come Back to Me’ in his dressing room. And I said, ‘John, that’s just the best music!'”
The songs are definitely the main attraction, and they’re beautifully sung by the 11-member cast, including leads Stephen Bogardus and Melissa Errico. “I’ve never seen the show onstage myself, so I’m starting fresh,” says Moore. “It’s so rarely done and I’m dying for people to hear this score. I met Lane once at a fancy party. He sat down at the piano and started playing ‘Look to the Rainbow’ from Finian’s Rainbow. I was new in New York City and I didn’t know who he was and I sat down beside this gentleman and said, ‘I love this song!’ And he said, ‘Well thanks, I wrote it!’ So I have always felt a tiny connection to him and his work.”
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“Translator Shraga Friedman collaborated with composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick and book writer Joseph Stein on the Yiddish version back in the ’60s,” explains Christopher Massimine, the chief executive officer of Folksbiene, the oldest Yiddish theatre company in the world. “Our Fiddler is not a literal translation, it’s an adaptation. There were themes the writers were not so confident bringing to a commercialized America but they thought were more suited for the piece in Israel in Yiddish.”
Sadly, the Yiddish Fiddler didn’t last long there (the Hebrew version was a much bigger hit), and it never played in the U.S. until now. “This is the ultimate musical to bring back in Yiddish,” says Massimine. “It’s authentic to the stories of Sholom Aleichem [upon which Fiddler was based]. This is the language the characters would have spoken” in a small village in Russia in 1905.
Read about students’ experiences at Carmen Jones and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever on TDF’s sister site SEEN.
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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and Fiddler on the Roof. Go here to browse our current offers.
Top image: Anika Noni Rose and Tramell Tillman in Carmen Jones. Photo by Joan Marcus.
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