A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Douglas Sills (Center) as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof , with his daughters: Hodel (Lily Burka), Tzeitel (Beatrice Owens), Mia Goodman (Shprintze), Rosie Jo Neddy (Chava), and Allison Mintz (Bielke). Photo credit: Daniel Rader. “A little musical about Jews in Russia. I don’t know if it will turn into something or not,” or something to that effect, is how legendary director/choreographer Jerome Robbins described Fiddler on the Roof to Richard Altman, who became his assistant on the original production and would go on to recreate Robbins’s staging all over the world, including London, Tokyo, and Tel Aviv. That’s how Altman told his story to me, when I had the great good fortune of meeting and being taught and directed by him as a visiting artist when I was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro almost 50 years ago. As I recall, he was introduced to Robbins at a party by Carol Burnett, who had been his classmate at the University of Southern California...

  Rob Collletti (center) and the cast of Guys and Dolls . Photo credit: Teresa Castracane Photography. Since October 2022, I have seen three productions of  Guys and Dolls : the first was the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage production (if you are interested, you may find my blog entry at https://theatregoerthoughts.blogspot.com/2022/10/guys-and-dolls-kennedy-center.html ), the second was Nicholas Hytner’s “immersive” production at London’s Bridge Theatre in September 2023 (which I did not write about), and the third is the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s current production at Sidney Harman Hall. Each of these productions, of course, is built on the dynamic and ingenious work of composer Frank Loesser and librettist Abe Burrows. (Jo Swerling shares the writing credit contractually, for having created an initial draft that was not accepted; Burrows may or may not have borrowed from that draft.) The year was 1950, the so-called “Golden Age” of American musical theatre, at th...