3. Fiddler on the Roof: Sad musicals are better than happy ones
My Dad had these monstrous tower speakers that were taller than me for most of my childhood, and every once in a while a wire would get disconnected from one of them. So for stereo recordings, half the instruments would be missing from the playback, making things very confusing for me.
I don’t know why my parents had both a record and a CD of Fiddler on the Roof, but they did, and I grew up listening to the soundtrack. I didn’t even see the movie until well into my teens, and I didn’t see the musical in person until last year.
Of course the music you love as a child doesn’t always manage to grow up with you, but Fiddler on the Roof sure did. Every few years I come back to it with a new layer of understanding, catching nuances and themes I missed before.
At its heart, Fiddler on the Roof is a musical about modernism encroaching on tradition at the turn of the century. Its characters are shrill and frequently annoying, but the drama is still deeply moving: you can’t help but care about them even as they squabble over petty things. I still don’t understand how such a commonplace setting with such commonplace characters can culminate in such a moving conclusion.
Although it’s dark, Fiddler is a comedy, proving that nearly everything that makes you angry can also make you laugh. And the contrast between sacred and secular is half the comedy: one minute Tevye and Golde are squabbling about something silly, the next moment they’re lighting candles and singing blessings for their daughters that have been passed down for thousands of years. The sacred and the petty are deeply intermingled, and the metaphysical aspects are concealed by a thin veneer of small-town drama.
I think a newer film version of Fiddler would be a worthy pursuit, although I don’t know how much commercial potential it would have. The version from the 70s is alright but it leaves much to be desired, so the best way to see it is still onstage.
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