IN ANATEVKA—George Lederer is Tevya the milkman and Wendy Abling is Golda in the New Blue Parrot production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opens in Vancouver on Aug. 30
Blue Parrot Does Tradition
By PAUL HAIST
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It’s not just wanting to bring more culture to Vancouver that drives former Portland Jewish Academy teacher Sacha Reich.
The same could be said for PJA Librarian George Lederer, but he doesn’t seem very interested in the first place in how much culture one can find in Vancouver.
The two of them together are more interested in theater, and specifically Jewish theater, than anything else that comes with what they are doing.
What they are doing is bringing “Fiddler on the Roof” to the stage of Mountain View High School in Vancouver. Opening night is Aug. 30.
Don’t confuse the venue with high school theater. This production of “Fiddler” is a project of the New Blue Parrot theater company, resurrected by Alex and Jennifer Johnson in 2004 from the old Blue Parrot Theater, which was established in 1983.
For those for whom the name rings a bell but can’t quite place it, The Blue Parrot was the name of Sidney Greenstreet’s watering hole in the film “Casablanca.”
Reich is directing this production of the Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein musical set in 1905 czarist Russia and based on an 1894 story by Sholom Aleichem. Lederer plays the lead, Tevya the milkman.
For Reich, bringing the shtetl of Anatevka back to the stage here (the last time it was produced here was the road show version at the Keller Auditorium with Theodore Bikel on the first night of Rosh Hashanah several years ago) is a personal homecoming, her return to a life in theater that began during her childhood in Portland.
She says she was introduced to theater in Portland when she was about five years old. She grew up in Young Judaea and chose to make aliyah in 1990. In Israel she continued to pursue her interest in theater and trained there to be a stage director.
She worked in professional theater in Israel until Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, after which she came home to America.
She continued to work in theater in this country, traveling with her husband and childhood sweetheart Aaron Pearlman to San Francisco where she joined the Women in Theater company, before moving back to Portland with Pearlman.
Reich has a mission that brings together her love of theater and her love of Judaism.
“I’ve wanted to bridge my Jewish identity and theater,” she says.
Before the Mittleman Jewish Community Center succumbed temporarily to financial woes from which it has since emerged, Reich said she and former MJCC Adult Services Director Flora Sussely “plotted a Jewish theater at the JCC” that would bring classical and modern Jewish theater to the stage there.
The first and last production was Donald Margulies’ “The Loman Family Picnic.” Financial reality intervened at the MJCC shortly later and the dream of a Jewish theater—like the West Coast Jewish Theater (where Bikel has performed) in Los Angeles and the Traveling Jewish Theater in San Francisco—was shelved, but not forgotten.
Directing “Fiddler” is a step toward that dream.
“It gives me an opportunity to do Jewish theater,” said Reich.
For Lederer, playing Tevya is a continuation of a life spent close to theater.
He began directing children’s theater in his synagogue youth group when he was a teenager. He worked as a theater director in the 1970s and 1980s at a summer camp in Massachusetts, where he once produced “Fiddler on the Roof” in just four weeks. He also was involved in theater when he was a student at Brandeis University and the University of Oregon.
Looking at the challenge of playing Tevya he said, “I’ve never done such a big role. It’s consuming me. Twice I’ve woken up singing. I’m starting to think like Tevya and talk like Tevya.”
Lederer has thought a lot about “Fiddler,” about what distinguishes it as a theater piece.
“Fiddler on the Roof” goes exactly the opposite way of most tragi-comedies,” he said.
Most tragi-comedies, he explained, start with a problem and proceed in a comic way to solve it.
“‘Fiddler’ ends with a problem that is not solved,” he said.
Reich agreed and likened the play that way to the recent Roberto Benigni film “Life is Beautiful.”
“Both address what is life,” she said, “the bitter and the sweet.”
Lederer sees it as essential or elemental Jewish humor, which he described.
“We make a self-deprecating joke, and then we step back and say, ‘That’s not funny,’ and we laugh anyway.”
Theater goers in Portland and Vancouver can laugh and cry with Tevya the milkman in August and September. The musical is slated for nine performances at Mountain View High School, which is located at 1500 SE Blairmont Dr. in Vancouver.
Evening performances with a 7 p.m. curtain are set for Aug. 30 and 31 and Sept. 7, 8 and 15. Two 1 p.m. matinees are set for Sept. 8 and 15. The closing performance will be at 3 p.m. on Sept. 16.
Tickets are $12 general admission, $10 for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased on line at newblueparrot.com; click on “Box Office,” or telephone 360-696-1155.