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By Norman Greene
 SAN DIEGO—First impressions can be deceiving.
When I saw Zero Mostel on Broadway staring in Fiddler on the Roof, I was convinced there could never be another Tevye. Seeing Luther Adler also in the role further convinced me.
Then came Topol’s Academy Award nominated performance as Tevye in the 1971 Fiddler movie, for which he won a Golden Globe Award. Topol was excellent in the film adaptation ...but still I harbored memories of Mostel in my heart, aided and abetted by hours of listening to the original cast album. I drank in Mostel’s pronunciations and growls and memorized his inflections and emphasis of certain words in the lyrics.
So it was with some reservation that I ventured this week to San Diego’s Civic Theater, not an intimate Broadway venue by any stretch of the imagination, to experience Topol’s "farewell" tour live performance as Tevye. I had my doubts that after 38 years he could breathe life into Tevye once again, especially since he had reprised the role in theatrical productions in London (1983) and on Broadway in 1990.
Frankly, I was skeptical that the show could still bring tears to my eyes after the years of exposure it has weathered.
Topol may be almost 74 years old, but he demonstrated no signs of age in this performance. His singing voice was more than fine and certainly exhibited more musicality than Zero even did. He inhabited his character bringing more humor to the role than I remembered. Where Mostel relied on his powerfully deep voice, Topol went for the higher and softer
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tones with a certain amount of shameless mugging, giggling
and rolling of the eyes. He was in short a very believable Tevye struggling with the changing times in Russian Jewish life.
Topol’s Tevye is very human as life grinds him down, as his heart breaks at the loss of his daughter to another faith, as his world is destroyed and yet his strength of character shines through as he pushes his milk cart toward the unknown, a new life far from the traditions, friendships, relationships and life of his beloved Anatevka. Certainly that is the way the role was written, but it is Topol the actor who brings these emotions to life on the stage in his own way and with his own timing and delivery.
In many road shows I have seen over the years, the "star" merely went through the motions as if delivering his/her performance by rote. Not Topol. He danced with careful abandon. He moved with great agility and energy. His was an almost constant presence on the stage. Like the father he portrayed, he showed real affection for his stage daughters, demonstrated the angst of a long suffering married man and the cunning of a man trapped into situations not of his own making.
At intermission, I overhead a fellow theatergoer commenting that Topol’s professionalism must have set a higher bar for the rest of the performers. It was true that the cast featured topnotch talents often not found in touring shows. And the audience in the cavernous Civic Theater was most appreciative of the star and his supporting cast members. The entire production was of a higher than usual quality.
Topol’s farewell tour will last for the next year and a half. His performance and this production are well worth catching even if you have seen a dozen incarnations of the show.
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