Fiddler and After

[George Robinson <GRComm...>]

Khaverim --

Since the subject has come up indirectly, I thought I would pose a
question to the list regarding Fiddler on the Roof, or more accurately,
the next Bock-Harnick show, The Rothschilds.

I have to admit that I have never seen The Rothschilds staged. However,
I am very fond of the original cast album and know large parts of the
score by heart. I have always wondered why the show was (comparatively)
a failure; I actually prefer the music and lyrics to those of Fiddler. 

I have always suspected that the reasons for its failure were two-fold.
First, it wasn't Fiddler -- how do you follow a success of that
magnitude and NOT disappoint people?

Second, and I think more salient, its attitude towards its Jewish
protagonists and non-Jewish antagonists is very different. Fiddler
sentimentalizes the shtetl (as we have established earlier this week ;))
and makes loveable victims of its Jews. The Rothschilds paints a very
different picture -- it shows Jews who fight back and do so not with
conventional weapons but with their financial acumen. And it shows the
Gentiles as overtly hostile, uniformly so, and pretty damned nasty at
that (In fact, the casting of Keene Curtis as all the bad goyim sort of
creates a Universal Bad Gentile who transcends history.)

Somehow I think it was easier for the theater-party crowds to handle
long-suffering noble shtetl Jews than a bunch of take-no-prisoners
wheeler-dealers who beat the Gentiles at their own game. 

Of course, it's also possible that the book was weak and the supporting
performances disappointing. Hey, I never got to see the show.

At any rate, anyone who has looked into this, I'd welcome comments.

George Robinson

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