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As with most WWOS production there is great strength and unity from the chorus who, as an ensemble, always manage to ad flavour and solid backing to the principals with well thought out choreography (care of Michaela Norton) and in tune singing. This was particularly effective with the songs “Dream” and “ToLife”.
Too large a cast to mention all but some good contributions from Kerry Bott as the eldest daughter Tzeitel, Chris Arden as Lazar Wolf her unwanted suitor, Louise Gauntlett as Grandma Tzeitel, Jacqui Morris looking lovelier than ever as Fruma-Sara and Patrick Vincent as Motel the tailor who finds that true love overcomes timidity.
Despite wonderful songs like “If I were a Rich Man” for me Fiddler is a dark piece. It reflects the horrors of the pogroms and the fact that prejudice lives in the heart of all men. Whether in the violent actions of the Russian constabulary or in the abhorrence of Jews to mixed marriages. The show itself is also something of a marathon with a running time of 3 hours. That gripe aside Terry Gauntlett’s direction kept the piece well paced and except for the odd lugubrious scene changer the settings were visually effective. Small set pieces, almost lost on a vast stage gave a sense of foreboding doom, the shadows were closing in on the village and they inevitably did.
WWOS seldom fail to please their audiences as the put a great deal of hard work in before the curtain ever rises. Fiddler was no exception.
Richard Sirot
Friday 1st November 2002
West Wickham are to be congratulated on this outstanding production of Fiddler on the Roof, which more than compensated for my long dark stormy drive to Bromley.
An excellent cast of more than fifty on stage at times held us spellbound as was the cunningly contrived set spun around on its hidden wheels and opened in all its various ways to produce the necessary and effective settings. A triumph of invention and imagination.
The songs were well sung and diction, the bane of all choruses, came across well. The theme of “If I were a rich man” recurs throughout and says a lot, but revolution no more solved the problem of the poor than did the removal of the nobility in France some 200 years before.
The Russian peasants of 1905 were well represented by a wide age range from tots to totterers manoeuvring successfully round the crowded stage while the intricate and fascinating dance routines were choreographed to include the superb bottle-dance on four carefully poised heads.
With so many lead characters to consider the splendid interaction and realisation was made complete as it moved to its sad but inevitable conclusion as the villagers were forced out and their homes pillaged while revolution began its dire and dreadful drive.
The strong cast were Kevin Gauntlett as Tevye, Pauline Gregoire as Golde, Kerry Bott as Tzeitel, Sinéad Tracey as Hodel, Philip Netscher as Perchik, Patrick Vincent as Motel, Ruth Cahill as Chava, Chris Arden as Lazar Wolf and Sue Callaghan as The Matchmaker, without in any sense devaluing seven other bit parts.
Tevye’s forgiveness as his two eldest daughters married against his will was salutary and contrasted, as only real life can show, with his obstinacy when his third daughter determined to have as husband the young gentile modernist counter-revolutionary! No museltov for them.
Director, Terry Gauntlett, Conductor Stephen Hope, Choreographer Michaela Norton.
Gordon Bull
Words & Music
Saturday 2nd November 2002