Review: A Vibrant, Loving "Fiddler" in Yiddish

"Fiddler on the Roof," The Soraya, Northridge, Calif., Sept. 13-14, 2025

Sept. 21, 2025 | By Bruce R. Feldman

In Brief: This abridged concert version in Yiddish of the beloved Broadway classic emphasizes glorious singing and choral work, affording a renewed appreciation for Jerry Bock’s tuneful, enduring score. It also delivers a lot of familiar laughs and a few tears. Assured performances from a veteran cast add to the overall pleasure.

Steven Skybell (third from left) leads the cast of Fiddler on the Roof at The Soraya

In the pantheon of American musicals, Fiddler on the Roof rests comfortably near the top. It opened on Broadway in 1964, ran for some 3,000 performances, was made into a hit movie that’s often replayed on TV, and has been revived on Broadway, internationally, and in regional and community theaters and high schools more times than anyone can count.

In 2018 the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene introduced a new generation of New York audiences to the show, this time in a Yiddish translation of the book and lyrics with English supertitles.

The Broadway star Joel Grey was brought in to direct a cast that included Steven Skybell as Tevye the milkman and Jennifer Babiak as his wife Golde. It’s a concert version of this production, with the original director and stars, that opened the Soraya’s new season last week for a sold-out three-show run.

So, why do Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish? I’ll tell you: I don’t know.

Steven Skybell and Jennifer Babiak as Tevye and Golde

Although the story is based on Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s quaint tales of Jewish life in a small Russian village at the turn of the last century, the winning book for the Broadway show was written by the American playwright Joseph Stein.

The play in any language is the potent reminder of the hardships successive waves of immigrants faced in search of a better life, free from Old World repression and bigotry. In today’s political climate, it also raises concerns as to whether even legal immigrants will have the same opportunities.

Politics aside, I suppose you could consider this production as a continuation of the legacy of the vibrant Yiddish theater that flourished around the globe from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until World War II. Fair enough.

But, if you are not a Yiddish speaker, do you benefit from hearing the songs and jokes in another language? Probably not. But who cares? Fiddler’s predictable laughs, charming characters, powerful emotions, and terrific songs are bullet-proof in any tongue.

Hodl (Yael Eden Chanukov) and Motl the tailor (Kirk Geritano) are in love

There’s plenty to admire and enjoy in the Soraya staging, starting with Skybell’s magnificent Tevye, the careworn milkman with five daughters. Babiak is effective as Golde, and Rachel Zatcoff (Tsaytl) and Yael Eden Chanuko (Hodl) are very strong as their two marriage-age daughters. Both played these roles in New York. Kirk Geritano as Motl the tailor, also from the original cast, was another standout in the large, vocally gifted ensemble.

The production benefited, too, from music director Zalmen Mlotek who, miracle of miracles, deftly elicited a rich, theatrical, always enchanting sound from the small on-stage band.

So, what’s not to like?

Because the book has been truncated, some of the expected bits are missing (“You know, you’re also right") and brief English narration has been added to fill in the gaps. Not that it’s needed, as who among the mostly mature audience that packed The Soraya didn’t know the story by heart?

What’s absent, other than half of Stein’s book, are the great Jerome Robbins dances, so familiar, so memorable, so integral to any production of Fiddler. The bottle dance at the wedding is one of the highlights of the show. Here it’s replaced by a clarinet solo, serving only to draw unwanted attention to the missing ballet. The better choice might have been to cut that part of the score.

The Bottle Dance, choreography by Jerome Robbins, as performed at the Stratford Festival in 2013

Also disappointing was the bare bones staging – not even a nightcap! – of Tevye’s dream in which he convinces Golde to let Tsaytl marry the tailor Motl. It’s a signature production number reduced here to a nothingburger. They couldn’t have added a little atmospheric smoke and some expressive lighting to give the number some punch?

In fact, the flat lighting throughout was another missed opportunity. A more dynamic theatrical lighting design would have enriched the proceedings. Finally, Lisa Fishman who played the bossy matchmaker felt a little lackluster to me, demonstrating that not every actress can be a Yente.

As for Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, this wasn’t my first time at this rodeo. The Yiddish text used here was originally presented in a 1965 production in Tel Aviv starring Shmuel Rodensky, the commanding Habima star known as the Laurence Olivier of Israel. I saw Rodensky in in a superb 1969 staging in Zurich. This was in a park, the rustic wooden stage and quaint houses of Anatevka nestled among a grove of trees.

(I am also old enough to have seen Ethel Meman in Gypsy, Richard Kiley in Man of La Mancha, Grey’s father Mickey Katz with Molly Picon in Hannukah in Santa Monica, and Grey himself with Liza Minelli at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas around 1970. Don’t ask.)

There were no trees, houses, smoke, night caps, fancy lighting, or bottle dancers at the Soraya the other night – just superb singing, sympathetic acting, fine musicianship and the welcomed opportunity to spend an agreeable few hours with an old friend who has aged extremely well.

I still don't know if performing Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish adds to the show’s impact or enjoyment, but, like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt.

"Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish," Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, CA 91330-8448, (818) 677-8800, thesoraya.org