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Tarpon's turn for 'Fiddler'

An audience favorite comes to north Pinellas, staged by the theater department of the Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center.

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published November 3, 2006

The 1905 story of persecuted but persevering Russian Jews, though tragic, is heartwarming and inspiring. The music is beautiful, with almost every song able to stand on its own merits: Sunrise, Sunset; If I Were a Rich Man; Matchmaker; Far From the Home I Love, to name just a few.

The show is so well received that theaters sometimes do it every five years or so. And it's not unusual for two or more companies in the Tampa Bay area to do the show during the same season.

Even so, the multiple productions almost always have solid ticket sales (in some cases drawing people who have just seen the show).

The Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center theater department is testing this belief when it opens its version of Fiddler today, a scant six weeks after a production of the musical finished a successful run a few miles up the road in New Port Richey.

The current production continues weekends through Nov. 19.

Fiddler, of course, is the story of a poor milk vendor named Tevye (Jerry Slutzky, Sennett in Mack and Mabel), the neighborhood philosopher who has been blessed with five daughters, the products of a marriage arranged 25 years earlier by his parents and the parents of his wife, Golde (Mary Lee Ross, Myra in Deathtrap).

As the girls approach marriageable ages, they begin to show troubling streaks of independence. Tradition says that Tevye and Golde should choose their daughters' husbands, but the intelligent and headstrong girls think otherwise.

Tzeitel (Meaghan Jameson, Stepsister in Cinderella) refuses to marry the old butcher Lazer Wolf (Tim Foster, Gen. Stanley in Pirates of Penzance), preferring the tailor Motel (Keith Surplus, Butler in Joseph/Dreamcoat).

When her younger sisters, Hodel (Leah Radel, Iris in The Argonauts) and Chava (Katie deHetre, Ermengarde in Hello, Dolly), show similar rebellion, the older couple begin to question their own lives, even as the local contingent of Russian soldiers begins to harass them, in part to keep them "in their place" and in part as an excuse to seize their land.

The Tarpon Springs production is directed by Rand Smith, who is perhaps more familiar to audiences as an award-winning performer (Higgins in My Fair Lady; John Adams in 1776). Choreographer is Jane Russell Geddings; music director is Mary Ann Boos.

IF YOU GO

Opening tonight

What: Fiddler on the Roof

Where: Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center, inside City Hall at 324 E Pine St.

When: Weekends today through Nov. 19. Shows are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays.

Tickets: $16; $14 for center members or students.

Call: (727) 942-5605.

[Last modified November 3, 2006, 07:45:01]