It’s taken me five decades, but I finally have my own Tevye. Honestly, there were times on Thursday night during the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre Fiddler On The Roof where I thought the man sitting next to me in the stalls was more of a match for the Anatevka milkman than the very talented Adam Dannheisser on the stage. People in the interval were doing double-takes over their gin and tonics, as well.
Miranda and Jeremy (aka Tevye)
I didn’t acknowledge it myself til recently, but I’ve secretly been in love with Tevye all my life. OK, maybe not my whole life (the film version of Fiddler came out in 1971, and I was born in 1968), but it’s highly possible I was sitting on my daddy’s knee when I first saw Topol doing his biddy-biddy-bumming for the first time.
As small children, me and my brother Miles (who these days also looks a bit like Tevye - agh - weird!) spent endless school holidays in front of Fiddler. And how we loved it - bellowing out Tradition, Russian dancing through L’Chaim, hiding behind the sofa during the frummer Sarah bad dream bit - though I have to say I mostly remember the sunny first half of the film: Miles and I tended to zone out after The Bottle Dance and the smashing up of the wedding
Like Tevye/Topol, my boyfriend Jeremy Kareken has twinkly dark eyes, cute laughter lines, a lusty gap-toothed smile and a bushy salt-and-pepper beard. (Did you know that Topol was 36 when Fiddler came out? Thirty six..?) But Jeremy has the properly-won gravitas of 54 years of life. He and I were at the Muswell Hill Chabad menorah-lighting last year when at least three people came over and asked Jeremy: “When does it start, rabbi?”
Two Tevyes, noch: the writer with her brother Miles Levy (left) and boyfriend Jeremy (right) at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof
Far from being a rabbi (though he can wrap a mean tefillin) Jeremy is a playwright and an actor from New York, who was once approached to play Tevye in a touring American production of Fiddler without even having to audition. He does make a specialism of playing beardy Jews - recently appearing as a modern version of Shylock on the off-Broadway stage, and in February he’ll be playing a Jewish actor who was named in the 50s McCarthy-ite hearings in The Value of Names in a Kennington pub theatre.
Just to be clear, here, it’s the Topol/ Tevye combo I am in love with: I looked at Mr Dannheiser on Thursday night and felt nothing – though the skinny Motel Kamzoil (Dan Wolff) up there on the stage was rather cute. And even though Jeremy keeps telling me I must watch the original Broadway Tevye, Zero Mostel – that Mostel is a far better Tevye than Topol ever was – well, Zero Mostel just isn’t that hot, so I’m not going to.
I also didn’t make much of Topol in his post-Tevye film career. I mean who really cares about or remembers Galileo or War of Remembrance? Though I do have a vague recollection of him popping up in For Your Eyes Only.
Yes, Topol has to be Tevye and Tevye, Topol – so it’s perfectly unsurprising that my Israeli heartthrob spent most of his career reprising the Yiddish paterfamilias on stages around the world – becoming the same age as the milkman, then growing elegantly past it.
Finally, what do I love about Topol/ Tevye? Let me count the ways. His wry humour, his sentimentality, his (in)ability to hold a drink, the loyalty to tradition - while realising the importance of compromise and moving into a new age (mostly). And of course the joyous singing, dancing, kvetching and kvelling. The Jewish chein.
(In fact, now I come to think about it, I also had a crush on Columbo (Peter Falk) as well. And Quincy MD (Jack Krugman).)
It's second-time around for Jeremy and me. We have both been married before, and have children in their late teens and early 20s. Our previous partners were not Jewish. So it seems I was destined to end up with a warm-hearted, sentimental, silver-maned Jewish man. Let’s just hope I’m not too much of a Golde.
Fiddler on the Roof runs until September 28
