A thatched roof shack with rustic barn doors stands in an idyllic field in Midway. If neighbors are concerned the house looks shabby and out-of-place abutting their new-build cul-de-sacs where farmland once was, don’t worry — it’s temporary. High Valley Arts Foundation erected this set at their Outdoor Summer Theatre, founded in 2011, for its nightly 8 p.m. “Fiddler on the Roof” performance, through July 20.
Based on stories by Sholem Aleichem in the book by Joseph Stein, with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, “Fiddler on the Roof” debuted to Broadway audiences in 1964, garnered nine Tony awards and played for over 3,000 performances in its initial run while spawning a 1971 feature film adaptation. The 1905 setting is in Anatevka, Russia, outside Kyiv, which is currently a refugee village in Ukraine under Russian attack.
Most of the musical’s local Jewish population is determined to remain entrenched in traditions isolated from the outside world, yet early rumblings of what will become the 1917 Russian Revolution against the Tsars already have the Russian soldiers stationed in the village conducting pogroms against the residents.
Starting at 7:10, live pre-show music and dance greet theatergoers as they take their “assigned seats” delineated by spray-painted boxes on sloped grass in camping chairs from home (or rented on-site for $2). As the sun prepares to set above Mount Timpanogos past stage left, Director David Thorpe steps out at the stroke of 8 to address the crowd.
In production notes, Thorpe writes that “home is a central motif, symbolizing the anchor of tradition amidst changing times,” topics certainly resonant in Midway, the growing city of 6,200 tucked into the base of the Wasatch back known for its Swiss Days celebration and traditional Alpine architecture. Thorpe gauges the crowd’s hometowns by “rips, snorts, hoots and hollers,” with plenty of locals in the audience that also includes visitors from Ecuador, Qatar, Hong Kong and states across the American West, then turns our attention to the production.
Daniel Clegg stands on the roof in his eponymous role of Fiddler, framed against the skyline, pulling at his bow. With grazing cows a pasture away, Heber Valley makes a good stand-in for protagonist Tevye’s rural Russian village at the turn of the last century as he enters pulling his dairy cart. A poor milkman patriarch played by Todd Beagley, Tevye is raising five daughters with wife Golde, played by Kara Charlesworth. Charlesworth’s own daughter, Lara, plays her character’s youngest daughter, Bielke, while Charlesworth’s mother Vicky Higley’s role as a villager makes for three generations of a family sharing the stage. Beagley’s two daughters, Sadie and Leah, also play villager roles in the 46-member cast, most of which appear on stage in gendered groups for the intricate, well-known first number “Tradition.” Costume Director Kristen Hughes has draped and layered the actors in culturally specific and era-appropriate clothing: women wear bonnets and aprons over floor length dresses in a variety of earth toned patterns, while the village men keep beards and wear hats, with tzitzit knots hanging beneath their dark suits.
Actors pull open the front of the shack to reveal a fully appointed domestic set that serves as a tavern in later scenes. Tevya and Golde’s three oldest daughters are of marrying age and their marriage plots, in which “love” as “the new style” will assert its power over matchmaker-arranged marriages, begin to stew. Primary to the plot is Tevya’s eldest daughter, Tzeitel (Elayna Knowles), who prefers the love of her companion since childhood, the poor tailor, Motel (Michael Clegg, who starred in 2023’s “The Music Man”) to the matchmaker Yente’s proposition of Lazar Wolf, a wealthier widower (Dave Sullivan).
Tevye shares a Mormon’s conversational relationship to God as he weighs his conflicted feelings aloud to the Almighty, not afraid to joke or be sarcastic with divinity (or misquote the Good Book with confidence) to the audience’s laughter as he see-saws on his dairy cart while singing. Tevye’s affable grump energy, Yente’s comi-tragic complaints, and two love triangles keep Act I zipping along like the motor of the much-anticipated sewing machine Motel is saving up for to impress Tevye and prove he can provide for his eldest daughter.
The dancing is terrific, especially considering the circumstances. You see, in the olden days, men and women weren’t allowed to groove together in the shtetl, until the young Communist tutor Perchik (Sam Neal) falls in love with Hodel, the second oldest daughter (Emersen Lyman), and takes her stepping to music in defiant breach of decorum. In spite of himself, Tevye is inspired to take his wife Golde in his arms as they get with the times. These dance numbers, choreographed by Christie Moulton, are lively and acrobatic as cast members jump upon set pieces, toss objects, balance glasses on their heads, hold each other aloft in chairs, and perform a trust fall that must have taken as much practice as learning lines.
The creepiest, most stunning scene of the production unfolds near the end of Act I as twilight wanes and the lighting crew casts a green and blue light sheen on a ghostly banquet. Tevye’s eagerness to please has left his eldest daughter engaged to two men, so he schemes up a dream that will sufficiently convince his superstitious wife to allow Tzeitzel to marry the poor young tailor she desires. The terrifying hallucination Tevye describes to Golde first features her ghastly grandmother (Lezlie Evans) urging a marriage to Motel before ushering in the butcher Lazar’s deceased first wife, Fruma-Sarah (Brooke Thatcher), who appears in an abrupt blaze of green smoke from above the right barn doors threatening retributions on anyone who would marry her still-living once betrothed, always betrothed. This scene, in which apparational women with shrouded heads are lit in vivid shifting colors surrounded by swirling ghosts moving a bed on wheels is wild and riveting enough to convince Golde that Motel should be Tzeitel’s husband.
Moments later, her third daughter, Chava (Lexy Osborne) receives the attention of gentile Fyedka (Kai Haddock) in the form of a loaned Heinrich Heine book. “Sunrise, Sunset” is performed at Tzeitel and Motel’s wedding as darkness falls on the Heber Valley. The Russian Constable’s (Rick Kellogg) threatened pogrom interrupts the wedding, leaving the village to clean up the mess as Act 1 ends with a 15-minute intermission.
A waxing half moon rises stage right above Timpanogos as field lights blink the social crowd back to their camp chairs. Months have passed in these minutes and revolutionary duties are now taking Perchik to Kyiv, where Hodel wants to join him as wife. Bugs fly around the source of stage lights, resembling snow flurries, while the audience cheers for the lovers’ kiss. The couple asks Tevye’s blessing rather than permission, so persuasively that he ends up giving both. Reflectively, he asks Golde if he and she have found love in their arranged marriage of 25 years. Her affirmative conclusion comes in the spotlight duet “Do You Love Me?” as geese quack nearby.
Afterward, Hodel pledges to follow Perchik to his new Siberian exile for one sort of closure, while, for another, Motel finally buys a sewing machine to improve his and Tzeitel’s lives with greater tailoring profits. Yet, when middle child Chava commits to marry Fyedka outside the Jewish faith, Tevye cannot summon the same magnanimity he showed her older sisters. Tevye revives the “Tradition” refrain in his defense, then a child sitting to my left remarks on the tune’s now threatening air. Tevye disowns Chava, declaring her dead, while the constable appears to inform that he has been ordered to displace all the villagers within three days. Efficient stagework emphasizes the banality of evil as departure preparations begin in haste. America will be Tevye and Golde’s destination with their two youngest daughters, and the characters remark on the transient nature of Jewish existence as they exit the stage. Tevye beckons the precariously balanced fiddler to come along as well.
The play finishes around 10:45 to standing applause while the cast returns for their bows. As Thorp said in his introduction to the show, “When we share our talents with you, it’s meaningful for you. When you share your appreciation, your attention and your energy with us, it’s this beautiful thing that ties us together.” Thoughts of husbandry, mutable boundaries, and the ways in which interior and exterior forces bring about changing times and territories occupied my mind heading home with my eye on Midway’s steep Alpine rooftops for any straddling musicians.
Tickets to remaining “Fiddler on the Roof” shows are available for purchase online at https://www.highvalleyarts.org/fiddler-tix/. High Valley Arts Foundation productions to round out the year will include October’s children’s performance of “The Jungle Book” and “A Christmas Story: The Musical “in December, both at the Midway Arts Center.