Beautiful Fiddler on the Roof at Home in Skokie

Music Theater Works is carving out a niche for itself with gorgeous fully staged, lusciously scored versions of landmark music theater productions that stay true to the history of America’s beloved art form,and bring the wonder of the form to new suburban audiences. I also have to give a shout out to their location: North Shore Center for the Performing Arts has miles of accessible parking that is actually accessible and the lobby and mainstage where this big show happens is relatively easy to navigate if you are mobility challenged, so if you are bringing a multi generational crowd to this lovely Fiddler on the Roof, and you should, it is accommodating.

So lets talk about director L.Walter Stearns rendering of this once controversial and now canon musical. With choreographer Maria Lampert, musical director Eugene Dizon, cultural consultant Rabbi Rachel Weiss, scenic designer Bob Knuth and lighting designer Andrew Meyers, they offer a visually stunning, musically complex, dynamically danced show that is at once a tribute to a musical that turns 60 and also still absolutely relevant today as our nation rounds up and deports people for being other. The show begins and ends with the dynamic cast as refugees.

Sam Nachison takes on the role of Tevye as grounded and vulnerable. He has the physicality and voice to carry the narrative of the village dairyman in the Pale of Settlement in Russia in the early 20th century just before the pogroms erase shtetl life.  Mitzi Smith as his long suffering wife Golde is kind and strong. Sara Stern’s Yente nearly steals the show. The entire ensemble and 19 person orchestra create a world that you don’t mind occupying for 3 hours, and miss when the show end.  The ending is not happy but it is hopeful unlike the original Sholem Aleichem story that the musical is based upon.  The final elegiac ableau is deeply moving.

Because you will travel to Skokie to witness this show, ( home of the Illinois Holocaust Museum a few blocks away) the production is particularly poignant: you may be sitting in the audience with descendants of the pogroms and the Holocaust, or other people who have left difficult places and moved to the US for a better life.

This must see version of Fiddler on the Roof is only playing Wednesday through Sunday until August 17th at the George Van Dusen Theatre in the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie Illinois. So run do not walk to get  tickets and more information: https://www.musictheaterworks.com/2025-season/fiddler-on-the-roof/

No part of this review was created using AI

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