‘Tevye is one of those roles that I’ve always felt I’m right for’
By SHARON EBERSON
Tony Award-winning actor Shuler Hensley sounds a bit giddy on the phone, describing where he is:
Alone on the Heinz Hall stage, seated, he believes, in the position of the second violin.
In a few days, Friday through Sunday, February 23-25, Hensley will be front and center, and joined by more than a hundred musicians, singers and dancers for Fiddler on the Roof in Concert, a collaboration of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburgh CLO.
Hensley will play Tevye, a character introduced in the Sholom Aleichem story “Tevye and his Daughters.”
The musical Fiddler on the Roof, with a title inspired by a Marc Chagall painting, created by Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein and directed by Jerome Robbins, opened in 1964 and played until 1972, winning nine Tony Awards, inspiring five revivals and a movie that was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.
In Pittsburgh, Andy Einhorn conducts the PSO, with Hensley and Broadway’s Ann L. Nathan (recent Funny Girl revival) as Golde, plus a host of Pittsburgh-based performers, The Tamburitzans, students from the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and the 80-strong Hamlisch-Page Student Chorus.
Hensley has long been eager to add the role of Tevye to his impressive credits, including his Tony-winning role as Jud Fry, in the 2002 revival of Oklahoma! He won Lortel and Obie Awards in 2013, starring in the off-Broadway premiere of The Whale.
Imposing at 6 feet, 3 inches, and possessing a rich baritone, he had previously played Javert in Les Miserables and later starred as the Monster in Young Frankenstein on Broadway. Most recently, he portrayed Marcellus, joining frequent castmate Hugh Jackman in The Music Man.
In the Fiddler concert at Heinz Hall, Hensley will give voice to a character originated by Zero Mostel on Broadway, and one that earned an Oscar nomination for Chaim Topol.
“Tevye is one of those roles that I’ve always felt I’m right for and I’ve always wanted to do, but just for schedule and whatever reason, I haven’t been able to,” Hensley said. “And then you add the fact that you’ve got this world-class orchestra behind you, and I was friends and worked with Sheldon and with Joe Stein. Now that they’re gone, it’s just a real special thing for me personally to be involved in this.”
Hensley last year directed a production of Fiddler at City Springs Theatre Company of Atlanta, where he also is artistic director. He went back to the musical’s inspiration for further insights into the story’s lasting appeal.
“Did you know that Sholom Aleichem met Mark Twain?,” Hensley asks. “He came up to Twain, introduced himself and said, ‘I hope you are not offended by this, but people call me the Jewish Mark Twain.’ And Mark Twain looked at him and said, ‘That’s funny, because people call me the Gentile Sholom Aleichem.’ That kind of amazing storytelling is just a wonderful dynamic, and the way [Harnick and Stein] wrote the show, the journey for Tevye, it is just a wonderful thing as an actor to be able to try to show all those sides to him.”
at City Springs Theatre of Atlanta, where he also is artistic director.
Hensley worked in Pittsburgh once before, on the 2001 movie The Bread, My Sweet, but missed an opportunity to return, when he briefly stepped away from reprising his Broadway role in the touring production of Young Frankenstein.
He said Pittsburgh was almost unrecognizable.
“This town has grown!,” Hensley said. “I’m from Atlanta, and it’s very similar, in the fact that every time I fly back to Atlanta, another building has gone up or something has changed. But I love this performing arts area where all these theaters are, because you just don’t find that much anymore in any of these big cities. It’s a real center to the cultural arts.”
In his hometown, Hensley lends his name to the equivalent of the Gene Kelly Awards, founded by the Pittsburgh CLO. (The Shuler Awards ceremonies in Atlanta have featured videos from Hensley pals including Jackman and Mel Brooks.)
On Saturday, the man who will be Tevye had just begun to meet local performers who will play roles in the Fiddler concert, familiar faces to PCLO patrons and other local companies.
“I just met one guy [Graham Fandrei, these days mostly an arts administrator and venue manager for the Trust] who was in the Broadway production of La Boheme. He’s a great sounding baritone who said he doesn’t really perform outside of Pittsburgh anymore. You find Pittsburgh connections all over the place.”
Other performers include Stephanie Maloney as Yente, Kristiann Menotiades as Fruma-Sarah, Justin Fortunato as Lazar Wolf, Brady Patsy as Mordcha, Allan Snyder as the Rabbi and Benjamin Kent Pimental as Nahum. Click here for a full cast list.
The concert version of Fiddler on the Roof is not the traditional stage show, of course, but it offers other tantalizing possibilities.
“What I love about this kind of concert is that the focus really is on the music, and you’re there to help tell the story,” Hensley said.
He noted that the event will come in at under two hours, when normally it would be in the neighborhood of two hours and 40 minutes. “And so it’s like a Cliff Notes version of it, but it’s still wonderful,” he said, adding, “I love the fact that I can be a part of just this wall of sound.
Tevye, a poor milkman with five daughters, traditionally narrates his own story and theirs. A girl dad himself, Hensley feels that “every father of daughters can relate to Tevye.”
“He is trying to provide. He is dealing with everyone in town. He is trying to be a good religious man. … I love where he says, ‘Maybe that’s why we always wear our hats,’ because he literally has so many hats that he’s trying to juggle.”
In the show, Tevye says that line in reference to Jewish people too often forced to hastily flee from their homes. In Fiddler on the Roof, set in 1905, the Jews of fictional Anetevka are forced into exile by czarist Russian forces.
“You look at a piece like this, that was written in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, and it’s as relevant as if it was written last week,” Hensley said. “And that’s sad, but it’s important for us to know. That’s the power of shows like this, that they don’t only have people in the present moment able to relate to it, but you can relate to people throughout history who have dealt with the human condition, and you would hope we would learn lessons.”
As the conversation drew to a close, Hensley was reminded of his quote in a video interview with Broadway.com editor-in-chief Paul Wontorek. They sprinted to a half-dozen Broadway theaters in which Hensley has played roles including a silverback gorilla in Tarzan, to Pozzo in Waiting for Godot.
When it was over, Hensley said, “I just love that feeling, that you’re reborn in every show.”
He likens the process to a palate cleansing, using as an example going from three months working on a new musical version of Scrooge! in Arizona, and then right into preparing for the Fiddler on the Roof concert in Pittsburgh.
With each new role, he finds depths of empathy and relatability, even in a Jud Fry or a Javert. And with each new character, there also is a bigger story to tell.
Fiddler on the Roof has continued to be reborn in productions like the one happening at Heinz Hall, because its themes are both universal and, for many Pittsburghers, deeply personal.
“There are generational problems, the challenge to traditional values, ethnic prejudices …,” Hensley began, and as he listed the themes, they called to mind an interview he had read with Fiddler on the Roof songwriter Sheldon Harnick:
“They had just opened this in Japan, and the Japanese producer came up to him and said, ‘How does this show play in America?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s quite successful. Why do you ask?’ And he was told, ‘Because it’s such a Japanese story.’ And I think that’s what all these areas of the world are saying. It’s still relatable, no matter where you live.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Fiddler on the Roof in Concert will be at Heinz Hall, Downtown, February 23-25, 2024. Tickets: visit the Heinz Hall Box Office at 600 Penn Ave., Downtown, or pittsburghsymphony.org, or call 412-492-4900.
Categories: Our Posts, Show Previews
Leave a Reply Cancel reply