A Yiddish take on 'Fiddler' speaks volumes

A splendid translated version of American classic sends the right message at dark time.

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LUIS LUQUE Luque Photography JENNIFER BABIAK and Steven Skybell.

Magnificent.

The concert version of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's celebrated production of "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish had its West Coast premiere at the Soraya last weekend, and anyone who was lucky enough to attend one of the three performances will long cherish the memory of this stunning musical experience.

Performing "Fiddler" in Yiddish returns the characters to the language of Sholem Aleichem's stories, the fictional world from which they sprung. The musical has been translated but in a way that moves Joseph Stein's book, Jerry Bock's music and Sheldon Harnick's lyrics closer to an authentic Anatevka, the village in which Tevye the milkman lives with his wife, Golde, and five daughters.

The one concern I had about a Yiddish "Fiddler" was the loss of Harnick's piercingly simple lyrics. Harnick had a way of expressing deep universal truths in the most natural, folksy manner possible. But, fortunately, his words weren't absent from the production. English supertitles, spotlighting Harnick's unmatched skill, were projected prominently behind the orchestra.

The language was often comprehensible even for non-Yiddish speakers. The rich man in "If I Were a Rich Man" was translated as a variant of Rothschild, the name of a well-known European Jewish banking dynasty. And even if that reference eluded anyone, Bock's bouncing, daydreaming, Old World melody, practically encoded into our cultural DNA, assured perfect understanding.