Diamond Fiddler: New Traditions for a New Millennium -- Why "Fiddler on the Roof" Always Wins

by Jan Lisa Huttner

This book is for all the directors and dramaturges, all the cast members on stage and all the crew members behind the scenes, who will pool their talents to present new productions of Fiddler on the Roof from 2017 to 2039. As you gather in high schools, colleges, and community theatres, as you travel from city to town on road tours, whatever country you live in and whatever language you speak, I hope this book will be a reliable companion. I hope you will find answers in these pages to the many questions I know you will have. I hope my words will help you beckon to the fiddler so that you can bring him with you on your journey. And most important, I hope that through you, new audiences will come to see the many facets of this brilliant Jerome Robbins diamond.And to the rest of you, to budding feminists and learned academics and lovers of Broadway, be you Papas, Mamas, Sons, or Daughters, if you are rabbis or butchers or any profession in between, whether you are a rich man or only the wife of a poor tailor, you are entitled to some happiness… so I hope you like it too.

350 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2021

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to the author and Kirkus Reviews.

I really wanted to enjoy this book since I'm a big fan of Fiddler On The Roof. I was in the play during my days in Jewish Center Youth in the 1970s, have the soundtrack from the movie and know all the songs, and have seen the movie numerous times. I don't know what I was expecting but it got tedious after 100 pages or so and I gave up.

It also got very repetitive with the comparison of the movie vs. the play vs. Shalom Aleichem's stories it was based on. Her repetition of speeches at various events were repeated throughout the part of the book I read.