A community is forcibly removed from its home in the ending of Fiddler on the Roof at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, and the review says that separation of loved ones by unimaginable distance and uncertainty remains upsettingly relevant.
That’s the hard fact sitting under the velvet curtain. The production, originally created for London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre by director Jordan Fein and designed by Tom Scutt to move from the outdoors to London’s Barbican theatre before making its way to Sydney, arrives with all the polish theatre can buy. But the story it stages is not about polish. It’s about a village under pressure, a family under strain, and a community facing removal.
The State’s Hand in the Story
The setting is Anatevka, the fictional village in tsarist Russia’s Pale of Settlement, now Ukraine, and the musical is based on stories by Sholem Aleichem. It was written by Joseph Stein, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, and it was the first musical to play Broadway for more than 3,000 performances. More than 60 years after its debut, it still draws crowds, which says something about how long people have been forced to watch power decide where they can live and how they can stay there.
On stage, a wheat field stands tall and stretches into the sky, with crimson poppies tucked among the stalks. It’s a vivid image, almost stubbornly alive. Then the review turns to the threat beneath it: news of pogroms in neighbouring villages turns displacement from an abstract fear into a concrete reality. The village isn’t just a charming backdrop. It’s a place where state violence and communal terror hang over ordinary life.
Tevye, played by Troy Sussman, is a dairyman who lives in the village with his wife Golde, played by Alexis Fishman, and their five daughters. The local matchmaker, played by Sigrid Thornton, finds a husband for Tevye's eldest daughter Tzeitel, played by Freya Boltman, but Tzeitel loves someone else. Tevye's daughters Hodel, played by Ellen Ebbs, and Chava, played by Caity Plummer, also make increasingly modern and autonomous choices about who they love and how they want to live. Tevye must weigh his love for them against his devotion to tradition. Small family decisions, in other words, are never just small. They’re made under pressure from custom, authority and the threat of expulsion.
Women, Change, and the Cost of Staying
The review says there is a welcome freshness to the production, especially in the women. Boltman, Ebbs and Plummer are described as fearless and joyfully unique as Tevye's oldest daughters. Ebbs foregrounds Hodel's strength of character even as she falls in love with activist Perchik, played by Maxwell Simon, and the review says there is no question she will be an active participant in the fight for change when she leaves her family for his side. Plummer's Chava keeps a spine of steel behind her famed sweetness. Golde, the most resistant to change in the family, is described as beautifully realised by Fishman with a rich and forthright performance.
That’s where the production’s sharper edge sits. Not in nostalgia. Not in the crowd-pleasing bottle dance, though the cast is said to invite the audience to lean forward and cheer for it. The edge sits in the women’s choices, and in the fact that those choices are made inside a world where tradition, family authority and looming violence all press down at once.
Ben Adler plays the Fiddler, who is close to Tevye in these moments, with sonorous notes that challenge, empathise and ruminate with him. In the second act, when Tevye's thoughts complicate and darken, so too does this musical conscience. The review describes Sussman as a musicals veteran who has understudied leads in a number of major productions, and says he’s having a much-deserved moment in the spotlight, with an easy physicality and warmth that will likely grow richer and more complex as the run continues.
A Community Under Pressure
Fein and Gary Abrahams, the resident director, have built close character work into the production. Every member of the ensemble is giving a detailed and dialled-in performance that paints a picture of a vibrant and close-knit community, with Thornton and John Waters singled out as community rascals. Musical director Dominic Woodhead leads a loud and nimble band, and additional orchestrations by Mark Aspinall add a layer of poignancy.
The review’s final turn is the bleakest one. It says the story’s melancholic ending, in which a community is forcibly removed from its home and loved ones are separated by unimaginable distance and uncertainty, stays relevant in a time of rising antisemitism and constant news of displacement, violence and loss, where wheat fields are littered with bombs and burnt stalks and holy lands are besieged by war. That’s the world outside the theatre, and the production doesn’t pretend otherwise.
The production is on at Theatre Royal Sydney until 3 October. It tours to QPAC in Brisbane on 9-25 October, Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne on 31 October to 27 December, and His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth from 7-31 January 2027.