In the aftermath of Trump’s election, there has been no shortage of topical, ultra-relevant stage productions. To name a few, this past year brought us The Public Theater’s controversial Julius Caeser, an off-Broadway production of 1984, a concert production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, a limited engagement transfer of Angels in America, and, of course, the upcoming Mean Girls musical.

My question is, where is Parade?

Parade is a 1998 musical about the hanging of Leo Frank, a Jewish man living in Georgia, accused in 1913 of killing a 13-year old girl. Although Leo Frank was originally sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment based on overwhelming evidence that he was wrongfully convicted. Before he could be cleared further, he was kidnapped from his jail cell and lynched.

Parade touches on all the pressure points of America in crisis: dark, xenophobic nationalism; boiling racial tensions and anti-semitism; the resentment between rural Southerners and urban Northerners; the dangers of fake news and mob mentality.

On top of that, it’s a masterpiece. Credit Alfred Uhry, the Atlanta-born Jewish book writer, and composer Jason Robert Brown (New York Jewish). Jewish theatre writers are common, but the hanging of Leo Frank is a significant piece of Jewish history—it inspired the founding of the Anti-Defamation League—so it’s especially important that it is rendered by Jews.

There was a special concert revival of the show in 2012, but that was a lifetime ago. Obama was president. White nationalist rallies were generally frowned upon. Conversations about Nazis didn’t end with smug centrist “Well, aren’t people who hate Nazis just as bad as real Nazis?”

The show opens with a rousing patriotic hymn sung by a young Confederate soldier. “Old Red Hills of Home” doesn’t work if there is any East Coast liberal elite judginess about what the Civil War was really about, and to his credit, Jason Robert Brown keeps it earnest. Form the soldier’s perspective, he is not fighting for slavery or hatred or love of violence. He is fighting for values, for “a way of life that’s pure/[For] the truth that must endure.” (You know, these values and purity were rooted in the belief that people could be property, but that’s for the audience to bring to the material.)

Flashforward to 1913. The soldier has lost his leg and the South has lost the war, but neither have lost their pride. Their fierce protectiveness for their way of life and their bitter hatred for the North have only intensified. Most of the city is excited to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, except Leo Frank, a Jewish Brooklyn transplant. Four years prior, wife’s uncle offered him a great job running a pencil factory but, as Leo laments, “I should have known it pays so much because you have to move to Atlanta to do it.”

He remarks to his wife “Confederate Memorial Day is asinine. Why would anyone want to celebrate losing a war?” (Right?) His wife, Lucille, doesn’t share his attitude. She is Georgian born and raised, and proud of it. To Leo, Atlanta is “the land that time forgot.”

Leo’s song, “How Could I Call This Home?” highlights his wry Jewish humor and outsider status.  “These people make no sense, I live in fear they’ll start a conversation,” he says. Even his connection to Judaism is strained: “These Jews are not like Jews/I thought that Jews were Jews but I was wrong.” His wife would prefer that he say “howdy, not shalom.”

From there, things move quickly: An young employee of the pencil factory, Mary Phagan, is found dead in the basement, Leo Frank is the immediate suspect, and a desperate reporter, Britt Craig, leaps on the story.

The city is out for blood. They want justice, and they want it fast. Suspicion falls on Leo and keeps piling up, regardless of whether it’s based on fact. As Craig points out, Leo is an educated Jew from Brooklyn, an easy target to villainize in Georgia. Craig deals in anti-Semitic caricatures: “Give him fangs, give him horns, give him scaly, hairy palms.” It sells papers, it gets clicks—what else matters?

At the trial, from a combination of false testimony and playing on the emotions of the white, Southern jury, Frank is sentenced to death. The city celebrates with yet another parade.

As Leo awaits his death, Lucille has no choice but to spread his story outside the city. Atlanta is divided on racial lines, with members of each group looking out for each other, and Lucille and Leo belong to neither. (There is an uncomfortable caveat to Parade: Historically, Jim Conley, an African-American man, was most likely Phagan’s murderer. The show’s writers attempt to balance his presumed guilt with the fear of violence the black citizens of Georgia lived under constantly, contrasted with the far rarer historical anecdotes of violence against Jews.)

Public pressure reaches Governor John M. Slaton and he decides to re-examine Leo’s case. With Lucille’s help, they gather enough evidence to have Leo’s sentence commuted. Leo and Lucille hope he will eventually be exonerated.

But the public outcry, the new evidence, the redacted testimony, the judicial system—none of that matters to the city and surrounding neighborhoods. They are convinced that a Jewish outsider assaulted and murdered an innocent child.  In the middle of the night, a mob of angry men break into Leo’s cell, kidnap him, and lynch him.

After Leo’s murder, Lucille chooses to stay in Georgia, which she still considers her home. When Confederate Memorial Day rolls around again, Lucille watches the parade. The show is mostly devoid of reprises, but the first number, “Old Red Hills of Home” returns as the finale.  The lyrics don’t change, but  they are cast in a new harrowing light. What, exactly, do these proud citizens stand for? What is the “way of life that’s pure?” What does a parade really represent? The final image of Confederate flags flying across the stage in a militaristic parade evokes a chill today that they wouldn’t have five years ago, let alone in 1998 when the show opened on Broadway.

Parade is not a crowd-pleaser. In fact, it closed after 84 performances despite good reviews and nine Tony nominations (it won two: Best Book and Best Score). It’s a bleak musical, but it’s derived from bleak history, and we’re living through a bleak present. (And as for casting, Jewish two-time Tony nominee Brandon Uranowitz really wants to play Leo Frank.)

There’s never been a better time to bring Parade back in any capacity, and we can only hope that it is never more relevant than it is now.

Image via Musical Theatre International

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You may not heard of Rags, but perhaps you should have. It may not be a mega-hit like Fiddler on the Roof, but in some ways it holds a similar appeal.

And, no, this isn’t Ragtime—Rags predates that more famous musical by over a decade. Think of it a bit like a spiritual sequel to Fiddler. It’s the story of Jewish immigrants struggling in the Lower East Side in the early 20th century (for example, one rather tragic plot line involves the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire). And it had a heck of a writing team—score by Charles Strouse (Annie), lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked and like half of your favorite Disney movies), and book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof!).

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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After our piece last week about Camp Ramah alumni starring (or about to star) on Broadway, we have a few updates.

In addition to the leads in Dear Evan Hansen, Frozen, and SpongeBob SquarePants (the musical), there is a current Ramahnik on Broadway. One of the child performers in School of Rock as “Katie” is Rachel Katzke (Camps Berkshires and Nyack). She brings her Ramah backpack to her performances, and took a week off of the show this summer to go back to camp for just a little while. In addition to acting and singing onstage, she also plays the bass in the show. How many actors make their Broadway debut before their Bat Mitzvah?

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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What is it about Camp Ramah?

Specifically, what is it about Camp Ramah’s theater program? A bunch of Jewish teens performing simplified Hebrew translations of classic musicals can apparently lead to the Great White Way. And this isn’t about a lone example— there is soon to be three different Camp Ramah alumni on Broadway at the same time— all of them in leading roles.

…

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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The Divine Miss M seems to be recovering nicely from losing Jewish Celeb Madness.

Was there ever any question that Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! would be anything other than an Experience? And since I saw it one day before opening night, wouldn’t it be silly for me, a humble Standing Room Only patron, to join the parade of rave reviews and bandy about words like “legend” and “star charisma?” For months, the words “Bette Midler. Hello, Dolly! What more do you need to know? Oh yeah: Telecharge” haunted my waking hours. That damn black screen advertisement showed up every time I watched something on YouTube. But eventually, I managed to see it (chairs are overrated).

Bette Midler was really good, guys.

Bette aside for a moment, Hello, Dolly! is a 1960’s Broadway musical so of course its creative team (Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman) is Jewish. One would assume that Dolly, the meddler of Yonkers, widow of one Ephraim Levi, brought to screen by Barbra Streisand, is patently Jewish, too.

But she’s not (necessarily)! As Jesse Green points out, there’s a long list of Dolly actresses who were not Jewish themselves and did not portray her as Jewish. In that same article, Tovah Feldshuh and Carol Channing discuss their differing portrayals of Dolly Levi. Whereas the non-Jewish Carol Channing plays Dolly as Jewish, Tovah Feldshuh plays Dolly as a 12-sibling, Irish potato famine emigré who “learned some things about Judaism, but she’s as Christian as she was 20 years ago.” After all, Feldshuh points out, Dolly’s maiden name is Gallagher.

Channing disagrees: “See, from my own personal experience, I’ve found that you turn Jewish when you’re married to a Jew.”

Feldshuh also makes repeated references to how she could “not afford” to play Dolly as Jewish. Channing doesn’t understand what she means; after all, Of course, saying that Gallagher is an Irish surname would have been a sufficient explanation.

But I could wager a guess: Feldshuh might be suggesting that playing Dolly as Jewish and being Jewish herself would be too much of a risk, something about which Channing does not have to worry. She may be worried she would be “too Jewish?”— That she would alienate an audience by injecting too much Judaism in a not-explicitly-Jewish play.

However, whatever it may mean, Midler can sure afford to both play Dolly as Jewish and be Jewish herself. With the sheer force of her charisma, Midler could take a hatchet to the set and a blowtorch to the Shubert and still get thunderous applause.

As for the rest of the show: it was delightful, old-timey musical fun, with much the same spirit as last season’s She Loves Me, but even grander. Speaking of She Loves Me, Gavin Creel passed on his weird mustache from that production to David Hyde Pierce, who is hilarious in Dolly as the stern Mr. Vandergelder. Creel plays the 33-year old virgin Cornelius, and he and Taylor Trensch as Barnaby make a delightful pair. (Side note: wouldn’t Nicholas Barasch be a great Barnaby? Wouldn’t he?)

Kate Baldwin is a feisty Irene Molloy, and Beanie Feldstein is adorable as  Minnie Faye. I just found out that she’s Jonah Hill’s sister but I won’t let that affect my judgment. The sets are beautiful, and the stunning reveal of Harmonia Gardens elicited gasps. There is also a moving train car and a dancing horse. What more do you need to know?

The bare black-screen commercials are right, but at this point, good luck getting tickets through Telecharge. For what it’s worth, standing behind the back row of the orchestra is not a bad view.

Photo by Julieta Cervantes, via Playbill.

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One of Broadway’s newest hits is Come From Away, a musical about the 6,500 plus airplane passengers who were welcomed into Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11 when U.S. airspace was shut down. With a versatile cast of 12 who portray passengers and the people of Gander alike, a bluesy rock score played by a band on stage, and a heartfelt message about kindness and community during a trying time, Away has all the ingredients to be both entertaining and timely.

The show, written by the married creative duo Irene Sankoff and David Hein, has been getting a ton of press, ranging from rave reviews to accounts of the performance that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended with Ivanka Trump and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley last Wednesday. (Trudeau wasn’t just in New York for a night on the town. Some of the same community members who invited the “come from aways” into their homes 16 years ago have recently helped four families of Syrian refugees adjust to life in Gander, and the prime minister spoke before the show about their generosity. “The world gets to see what it is to lean on each other and be there for each other through the darkest times,” he said.)

Although it’s tough to top anything involving our northern neighbor’s charming leader, what’s more noteworthy to us here at Jewcy is that Sankoff and Hein’s previous musical was an autobiographical project called My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, based on Hein’s experience of his mother coming out to him and then attending her real-life nuptials. In addition to the rousing title song, which Hein says is about “Hot lesbian action…and my mother,” other numbers include “Don’t Take Your Lesbian Moms to Hooters” and “A Short History of Gay Marriage in Canada.” If only there were video evidence of this project!

Oh, wait.

As for the newer, decidedly more serious, play, Come From Away also has a Jewish touch: a rabbi character based on Rabbi Leivi Sudak, who is in charge of Chabad of Edgware, near London. Rabbi Sudak, who flew to New York to visit the grave Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in advance of Rosh Hashanah in 2001, was among those stranded in Gander.

Singing rabbis? Jewish wiccan lesbians? Sankoff and Hein are a duo to watch.

Image via Facebook

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Good news! After a relatively gentile 2016 scene, This Broadway season is looking to be mighty Jewish. Here are the Semitic-seeming shows scheduled for spring:

First of all, Sondheim. Second of all, Sondheim where Jake Gyllenhaal is taking on a role made famous by Mandy Patinkin. That’s right, the Jewish actor stars in a revival of Sunday in the Park with George, opening next month.

Onto March! What a gift— it moves The Price from previews to opening; it’s a revival of the Arthur Miller play that actually has some overt Jewishness, unlike many of his more coded shows. March gives us the Broadway transfer of Oslo— as in, the Accords; the play tells the story of the little-known key players behind the scenes of the 1990s Israeli-Palestinian peace process. And, perhaps best of all, March brings us War Paint, the musical that stars Patti LuPone as Helena Rubinstein (focusing on her lifelong rivalry with Elizabeth Arden).

April showers bring Bette Midler back to Broadway! That’s when the revival of Hello, Dolly! opens, and everyone is rightfully freaking out. April also brings Indecent to the Great White Way, the new play with music about the controversy of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance playing Broadway in the 1920s (women kissing each other!? How scandalous!).

Also, hey, did you know off-Broadway (or even, God forbid, off-off-Broadway) is a thing? One such promising play is If I Forget, opening February. It’s a family drama about a liberal Jewish studies professor, set a few months before 9/11. Also, a new David Mamet play about a psychiatrist, The Penitent, opens around the same time (it may not be particularly Jewish; it remains to be seen. But Mamet sure is).

So the pickings are ripe! Whether you want a new family drama, or an old musical favorite, there’s something for you.

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The Jewishness of Falsettos isn’t apparent in its summary: a man named Marvin leaves his wife, Trina, and son, Jason, to be with his male lover, Whizzer, even though he still wants everyone to have dinner together. It’s awkward. To help with the awkwardness, Marvin sees a psychiatrist, who then becomes Trina’s and Jason’s therapist, and later marries Trina. That’s also awkward, but not as awkward as you would think.

The current Broadway production is a revival of William Finn and James Lapine’s 1992 musical, and it still pulls no punches. The unabashed Jewishness first strikes with its opening number, “Four Jews in a Room Bitching” (actually five, counting Trina), a playfully self-deprecating celebration of Jewish neuroses. The men sport Biblical robes and beards before ripping off their costumes to reveal late 70’s-era attire. Lyrics include “Now we’re at the Red Sea/Pharaoh is behind us/Wanting us extinct-ed/And then the Red Sea/Split before us/No more tsouris!” and “I’m neurotic, he’s neurotic/They’re neurotic, we’re neurotic/Bitch bitch bitch bitch/Funny funny funny funny.”

Based on its opening number, you’d expect a cast of over-the-top, insufferable Jerry Seinfeld- and Woody Allen-types, but with the exception of Brandon Uranowitz, none of the cast members are Jewish. As the therapist Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Uranowitz both channels Chip Zien, the role’s originator, and adds his own distinct charm with his wry Jewish delivery of the book’s wry Jewish humor.

As for the others? Christian Borle isn’t Jewish—or gay, although he sure has a habit of getting cast as such. Whizzer is played by Andrew Rannells, a Midwestern Catholic schoolboy whose breakthrough role was a Mormon. (To be fair, Whizzer self-identifies as only “half-Jewish.”) Stephanie J. Block (Trina), was also raised Catholic and, despite his last name, Anthony Rosenthal is only a quarter Jewish.

Despite the opening number, the first act of Falsettos could be an ethnically generic family drama. It’s in the second act that Jewish references hit full-force—hard to avoid when a major plotline is planning a bar mitzvah.

For the first half of the second act, Judaism is treated with classic self-deprecating humor. One song is about “watching Jewish boys who cannot play baseball.”

“It’s weird how he swings the bat,” Marvin moans, “and why does he have to throw like that?”

Mendel implores Jason to “Remember Sandy Koufax…take heart from Hank Greenberg/It’s not genetic.” With a little intervention from the half-Jewish Whizzer, Jason hits the ball and scores a strike, or some good baseball thing that I don’t understand.

But more important than baseball is Jason’s bar mitzvah, which Marvin and Trina contentiously plan. “It’s the last loving thing we’ll ever do together,” Trina says, but they argue over everything, from catering to the guest list.

Jason would rather cancel the bar mitzvah than hear his parents fight over it. It’s supposed to be a “celebration where [he gets] richer,” and his parents are ruining it. They treat him to the familiar guilt trip of “You are gonna kill your mother/Don’t feel guilty, kill your mother/Rather than humiliate her/Killing your mother is the merciful thing to do.”

It could just be confirmation bias, but Borle and Block don’t quite capture the Jewishness of the guilt trip, but Uranowitz more than makes up for it. It’s the distinctly Jewish Mendel who comforts Jason with “Everybody hates his parents—that’s in the Torah!” and who argues that Marvin and Trina should just “throw a simple party/Religion’s just a trap that ensnares the weak and the dumb/Stop with the prayers.”

“How can you stop with prayers at a bar mitzvah?” Trina counters, yet Trina and Marvin also seem to be more cultural and secular than religious. (Isn’t that always the case with Bar Mitzvah stories? 13 the musical is similarly areligious, despite the Bar Mitzvah plotline.)

Halfway through, the show takes a dark turn: Whizzer comes down with a mysterious illness. The disease is clearly HIV, but at the time the second act takes place, 1981, it’s a nameless killer.

With Whizzer dying, Trina and Marvin offer Jason the choice of canceling the bar mitzvah. Jason is naive enough to believe Whizzer will get better and he wants to wait until then. It’s the pragmatic Mendel who tells Jason: “We can’t be sure he’ll ever get better, when or if he’ll ever get better…so what we’ll do is your decision.” But Jason doesn’t want to decide and, distressed, he runs off.

Mendel asks Trina: “Why don’t we tell him that we don’t have the answers…Tell him things happen for no damn good reason/That his lack of control kills what’s best in his soul and that this is the start to his becoming a man.”

The bar mitzvah is no longer a sitcommy plotline, but a device to show Jason’s growth. For the first time in his life, Jason prays to God: “Hello, God, I don’t think we’ve ever really spoken.” He promises to have a bar mitzvah if God saves Whizzer.

Suffice it to say, that doesn’t happen, and Jason finally makes his decision: he will have his bar mitzvah in Whizzer’s hospital room. From a guest list of 200, the party is whittled down to seven. Jason is called to the Torah as “son of Marvin, son of Whizzer, son of Trina, and son of Mendel.” It’s an unconventional arrangement, especially for the time period, to say nothing of the fighting and heartache that led up to that moment. But their differences are put aside for a joyous celebration of life and family, devoid of the superficialities that so seemed important at first. Whizzer dies shortly after.

Heavy-handed? Yeah. Borderline emotionally manipulative? A bit. Did I sob anyway? You bet. Using a bar mitzvah to show a boy’s emotional maturation in the face of family tragedy might be too on the nose, but Falsettos—the book, the cast, and in particular Anthony Rosenthal’s performance—earns enough emotional currency to get away with it. And, to be fair, I doubt Falsettos was “heavy-handed” when it first premiered, an early show to deal with the AIDS crisis. If there are some moments that chafe on my cynicism, it’s more a mark on me than on a wholly beautiful, still-resonant show.

Plus, how often do you see a meaningful Bar Mitzvah in entertainment, really, beyond a symbolic shrug that a boy is reaching maturity, or a one-off joke? It doesn’t even have its own TV Tropes page.

Image by Joan Marcus

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The theatre world is abuzz, because tonight is the one-night-only concert of Jason Robert Brown’s musical, The Last Five Years. The musical, which originally played New York city in 2002, had a film adaptation only one year ago. The musical, following a failed relationship from the couple meeting through divorcing (based on Brown’s first marriage), is traditionally performed with only two actors. Tonight’s sold-out concert is garnering so much attention because its cast is two extremely prominent Broadway performers: Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry.

The two are both African American, unusual for The Last Five Years, but in the era of Hamilton, Broadway has become bolder with casting with an eye towards diversity. Once Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison have all been portrayed by people of color (to great success), why on earth can’t you cast anyone talented enough as (semi-)fictional characters? And thankfully, most people seem unfazed by this production, but are simply excited.

“Cynthia and Joshua, even I want to see that,” Brown told Playbill. “Who doesn’t want to see Cynthia and Joshua do pretty much anything?”

He’s right, but perhaps the disappointing aspect of this news is the insistence that Erivo and Henry’s race is irrelevant to the characters. While this is mostly valid, a key element of The Last Five Years is that Jamie Wellerstein (Henry’s character) is Jewish. In fact, his first song in the show, “Shiksa Goddess,” is about his interest in Cathy (Erivo) stemming from the fact that she’s not a Member of the Tribe.

“Not changing the story is part of the point, which is to say that great actors will have a valid take on material,” Jason Robert Brown, who is also directing this production, told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s not that I’m even asking anyone to believe that Joshua Henry is a nice Jewish boy from Rockland County but what Joshua can bring to that part is immensely substantial, and that’s what my job is as a director — to make sure he brings all of his truth to that role without compromising the writing.”

But here’s the thing, Mr. Brown. Why shouldn’t we believe that Henry is a nice Jewish boy? Estimates for the Black Jewish population in America ranges from the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. In fact, just this past year, the Tony Winner for for Featured Actor in a Musical was Daveed Diggs, who is both black and Jewish.

Audiences for this production don’t have to be watch Joshua Henry as though his excellent performance will compensate for him not being what you think Jamie should look like.

We should not be approaching this production the same way we approach the Founding Fathers in Hamilton, with a wink to anachronism and artistic license, as a way to pose questions about fairness and equality in the way we approach history through art. That could be true for, say, a mixed-race cast of Fiddler on the Roof, when you would have a hard time finding Jews of African descent in the shtetl. But a young man who grew up in New York State in the twentieth century, who is both Jewish and black? We should accept that as realistic.

Image via Facebook. By Jenny Anderson

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Bad news, kinderlakh: The current revival of Fiddler on the Roof has announced its closure, for the last day of 2016. At the time of its final performance, it will have been on Broadway slightly more than a year, earning three Tony nominations (no wins, but literally only three musicals got any this year).

This production did well critically and decently commercially; it is closing at a loss, but because Broadway is a scary, weird place, this isn’t unusual. Fiddler is going to be fine; don’t you fret.

So to look on the bright side, I decided to gather some numbers about Fiddler on the Roof to figure out just how OK it is:

—This was its sixth outing on Broadway— that’s more productions than Tevye has daughters (in the musical; not in the original stories). This makes it tied for the fourth-most revived musical on Broadway of all time (and the three shows ahead of it on the list are older, and have had more time for productions).

—In fact, if you divide the years by number of Broadway productions from the list of the twenty most revived shows, Fiddler has the lowest number; it averages a new production every 8 years and 8 months. (This doesn’t factor shows with long-running productions that haven’t had a chance for revivals; it’s why Cats, say, only has one.)

—Between all six productions, Fiddler has garnered 21 Tony Award nominations, winning a total of 9 of those. This isn’t counting the honorary award it took home in 1972 for becoming then the longest-running musical in Broadway history (it’s currently at #16 for that first run).

—The mean duration of these six productions is 726.5 days, and exactly half of them have run more than a year.

—For the big question: Since its first Broadway performance in 1964, what percentage of the time is it playing on Broadway? Time for some math:

When this production closes December 31st, how many days will it have been since its first performance (previews count), September 17, 1964?  19,099.

How long did the first production play? 2,846 days (shows tend to average more than one a day, and here it passed 3,200 performances).

The second production lasted 146 days.

The third lasted 46 days.

The fourth: 226 days (and there was probably a performance the day I was born! How nice!).

The fifth: 717 days.

This production (assuming it closes on the date promised, but these things are subject to change):  378 days.

This means that since 19,099 days ago, Fiddler on the Roof has been open on Broadway for 4,359 days.

Well, we do some quick division, and discover, that if you took a time machine to any day after September 16th, 1964, the odds that you would land on a date during a run of Fiddler on Broadway is 22.82%. That’s right, higher than the percentage of Tevye’s daughters that move to Siberia.

I leave you with that figure as a sign of hope that within the next decade we’ll have Fiddler back, and that it will stick around for a bit. Also, be cheered that you still have time to see this production; it’s a shame it’s running about half as long as the one before it when it’s easily twice as good.

*Insert joke that Fiddler playing Broadway is a “Tradition!” here.*

Image credit: Alexandra Silber, Samantha Massell, Melanie Moore, Danny Burstein, Jessica Hecht, Jenny Rose Baker, and Hayley Feinstein in Fiddler on the Roof. Photo by Joan Marcus.

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