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Fiddler on the Roof
Judith Newmark - Post-Dispatch Theater Critic - 6/17/2003
As the star of the Muny's opening production, "Fiddler on the Roof," Bruce Adler doesn't simply play a part. It seems as though he's found his alter ego.
Strange as it sounds, the veteran musical-comedy performer has never before played Tevye, a Jewish dairyman in old Russia. Never mind; now, he's bound to. It feels ... well, in English, you'd say destined. But what it really is, is b'shert. Touching and thoughtful, Adler's performance passes a classic role to a new generation - and a new, definitive interpreter.
Tevye is a terrific character. He dominates the musical, loosely based on stories by Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem. Tevye has plenty of problems - he's poor, he has five unmarried daughters, and he's part of a group whose neighbors treat with routine scorn and occasional bursts of violence. But he faces his troubles with cheer, faith and, as the big opening number points out, a strong reliance on "Tradition," the linchpin of his whole community.
Many gifted performers have played Tevye, notably Zero Mostel, who created the role, and Theodore Bikel, who starred the last time the show played the Muny. They have, as a rule, tended toward a broad style, brimming with bonhomie; think Zorba the Jew.
That's not Adler's approach. In the first place, he portrays a considerably younger man. That makes sense; his children are still under 20. More important, he's a normal man, quietly chatting with God in the same offhand way he talks to his wife or the kosher butcher. When he sings and dances, he's modulated rather than extravagant, an approach that lets the tenderness of "Sunrise, Sunset" or the wry humor of "If I Were a Rich Man" shine through. It's no criticism of his many distinguished predecessors to observe that Adler's more natural style suits our times. Not only does he emphasize the artistry of the songs by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick - rather than the artist - but he makes it easier to relate to Tevye as a man and a father.
That's increasingly important today, as the world that "Fiddler" depicts, the world of the Eastern European Jewish village, recedes into history. Adler's performance makes us realize how much we still have in common with the Jews of little Anatevka - families struggling with questions of love and loyalty that have changed only in style, not substance.
Besides, "Fiddler" is far too good to write off as a quaint curio. At the Muny, Sammy Dallas Bayes has re-created Jerome Robbins' groundbreaking direction and choreography (Bayes danced in the Robbins' production). It remains a vivid style of storytelling, especially with a set, by Steve Gilliam, that pays homage to the paintings of Marc Chagall. These touchstone images - airborne shacks, one topped by a raggedy musician (Conner Gallagher) - simultaneously locate us in time and place, and dislocate us by suspending the rules of gravity. Like many Chagall paintings, "Fiddler" invites us into an illogical, emotion-soaked dream world where stability is an illusion.
The show's biggest number actually is a dream - well, a fake dream that Tevye cooks up to persuade his superstitious wife (Susan Cella) to let their oldest daughter marry the poor tailor she loves. In this lively sequence, the big ensemble lets loose, especially Michele Burdette-Elmore, Jesse Bernath and Jane Pisarkiewicz as comically nightmare creatures.
The nightmare spectacle has a poignant counterpoint, "Chavaleh," in which Tevye dreams of his eldest daughters (gracefully portrayed by Juliana Stefanov, Sara Schmidt and the sweet soprano Andrea Burns) as they move away from him into lives of their own. With the stage drenched in designer David Lander's deep rose light, Tevye curls up on his pushcart as the young women behind him form a line, then a circle - and then are gone. Though our reasons may be different, any parent can understand just how he feels.
What the critics said about Bruces' perfomance as Fagin in "Oliver!" - (August 2006)at the St. Louis Municipal Opera.
by Judith Newmark - St. Louis Post Dispatch
"Adler makes a superb Fagin; subtle and frankly self-interested, affable and anxious. He dilivers Fagin's key song "Reviewing the Situation," with an emotional range (comedy, terror, sorrow) that outgh to take a lot more bars than Bart composed for it."
Some of what the critics are saying about Bruces' performance in Neil Simons' "The Sunshine Boys"
THE MIAMI HERALD - Mon, Feb. 12, 2007
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
The Sunshine Boys is a Neil Simon classic: funny, touching, truthful, grounded in the long-ago world of vaudeville and the distinctive rhythms of so many great Jewish comedians.
Chances are you may have seen the play a time or two. Or three.
So what might entice you to make a drive -- a long drive north -- to see yet another production? Just the fact that this one stars Bruce Adler and Avi Hoffman, who happen to be be very, very good as the warring comedy team of Lewis and Clark.
Both men have sizable followings in South Florida, ... those fans packed the Saturday matinee ... at the New Vista ... to watch Adler and Hoffman work their comedic magic.
Adler, his brown hair sprayed gray and fluffed into telling disarray, portrays Willie Clark. .... Hoffman's Al sports a combover and a low-key style. Yet somehow, in the classic vaudeville sketch that is embedded in The Sunshine Boys, this Lewis and Clark demonstrate just how artfully they were able to knock 'em dead for more than four decades.
Directed by Amy London (Mrs. Bruce Adler), the production brings out the best in its accomplished stars. Both men are perfectly capable of masterful scenery-chewing, yet here their portraits of elderly men are rich, tender and, when the moment is right, understated........ Adler and Hoffman, .... make Simon's comedy sing and zing.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
THEATER REVIEW
Hoffman, Adler are rays of Sunshine
By Bill Hirschman
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
February 14 2007
There's a delightful symmetry in New Vista Theatre's production of The Sunshine Boys, watching a couple of old pros reviving a classic comedy about a couple of old pros reviving a classic comedy.
Audience favorites Bruce Adler and Avi Hoffman have a grand time portraying Neil Simon's deteriorating ex-vaudevillians trying to put aside their decadelong grudge for a TV retrospective.
Under Amy London's direction, Simon's celebration of the rimshot rhythms of vaudeville and its grandchild, television sketch comedy, are dead perfect -- both in the script and in the mouths of Adler and Hoffman, whose Brooklynese pronunciations of "rehearse" and "nurse" should be preserved in a museum.
Adler in particular is wonderful as the beetle-browed, befuddled Willie Clark, still angry that his partner retired on him 11 years earlier. Hoffman, with less stage time, is solidly amusing throughout as Al Lewis. Even his knock on the door before entering for the first time is funny -- a harbinger of a pomposity guaranteed to infuriate his ex-partner.
Like actors taking on Lear, both men are 20 years too young for the parts. But such is their talent, skill and, paradoxically, their energy that they are absolutely convincing as crusty curmudgeons trying to preserve their pride long after the parade has passed by. It's in their limping and shuffling, the resentful pouts, the slightly dazed look as they assess their surroundings, but most of all in their anger and fear that their bodies and time have betrayed them.
It is hard to know how much of the funny business adorning the script comes from the actors and/or from London. But she clearly deserves credit for the melding of autumnal elegy and rueful humor that imbues the evening.
The Newark Star-Ledger - Review of "Come Fly With Me"
Nostalgia at its sweetest: Sammy Cahn reappears as Bruce Adler in the uplifting 'Come Fly with Me' in Metuchen
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
BY PETER FILICHIA Star-Ledger Staff
As Ingrid Bergman said to Dooley Wilson in "Casablanca," "Some of the old songs, Sam."
And there are dozens of old songs by Sam -- meaning lyricist extraordinaire Sammy Cahn -- in "Come Fly with Me," the wonderful and charming nostalgic revue at the Forum Theatre in Metuchen.
In our current era, where hit songs have such names as "Shake Ya Tailfeather" and "P.I.M.P," what a pleasure to hear glorious hits of yesteryear. There are sumptuous ballads ("All the Way" and "Call Me Irresponsible"), witty novelty songs ("Bei Mir Bist du Schon" and "High Hopes"), not to mention such swingin' singles as "Five Minutes More," "Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week," and, of course, "Come Fly with Me."
The show is actually a rewrite of "Words & Music," the revue that Cahn himself performed on Broadway in 1974. Alas, the great wordsmith died 11 years ago, but Cahn's widow saw no reason why the "and-then-I-wrote" show couldn't be revived with someone portraying her late husband.
Someone terrific is. He's Bruce Adler, who's endeared himself to audiences on Broadway, at the Forum, and beyond. The trim, slick-haired entertainer doesn't look at all like the diminutive, balding Cahn, but no matter. Not long into the show, as he lopes across the stage in a walk that was very much like Cahn's, audiences accept Adler as the real thing, and even give recognition applause when he begins to sing "Please Be Kind" or "Pocketful or Miracles" -- as if he actually wrote them.
Adler's a riveting raconteur, too, the type of story-teller who can make each audience member believe he's speaking directly to him or her. He zips through Cahn's stories of growing up poor in New York's Lower East Side before insinuating himself into show business. Not-so-slowly but ever-so-surely, he succeeds in a field that brought him "joy, pleasure -- and," he says with a diamond-bright gleam in his eye, "profit."
He explains why Doris Day cried through her audition for her first movie role. How he and composer Jule Styne argued over the middle section of "Three Coins in the Fountain." That he hated composer James Van Heusen's first melody for "The Tender Trap." And given that Cahn was arguably the man who gave Ol' Blue Eyes the lion's share of his hits, there are a few pungent Sinatra stories, too.
But most importantly, Adler has the brio of a songwriter who just loves to sing his songs. He sways in delight during the up-tempo numbers, yet turns poignant during the serious ones. After he finishes, he offers a victorious smile of one who knows he's done a good job. Under Paul Burke's rapid-fire direction, he indeed has.
Of course, doing song after song for two hours would be draining, so Adler gets a rest while three other performers ply Cahn's wares. The pert Kate Manning is winning in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and tender in "I'll Walk Alone." Avery Sommers brings an African-American sensibility both to "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" and "Teach Me Tonight." Joseph LeBlanc has one of those booming "Old Man River" voices -- not that Cahn wrote that, one, too -- and makes magic with "It's Magic" and "Be My Love."
But ultimately it's Adler -- and Cahn's -- show. At the finale, after the star sings "My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)," he has his trio join him and change the lyric to "My Kind of Town (Metuchen Is)." Here's betting that not too much time will pass before Adler and Company are serenading Broadway audiences with, "My Kind of Town (Manhattan Is)."
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..... I was part of a crowd at the York Theater saluting Carol with a lifetime achievement award. ..... Carol was the first performer to get the Oscar Hammerstein Award.
Bruce Adler is a scene-stealing delight as Eliza's amorally realistic father, the redoubtable Alfred P. Doolittle.
