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HOW ARE THINGS in Glocca Morra?” is a song from the 1947 musical “Finian’s Rainbow,” which is about, among other things, a leprechaun. Glocca Morra doesn’t exist, and if it did, it wouldn’t be in, say, Poland. The song is sung by a homesick Irish lass in the American South; like the show overall, it […] More
Soon after appearing in the original Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” she began a new career as a prominent casting director.Joanna Merlin, who, after originating the role of Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, in the hit Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” became a renowned casting director, notably for Stephen Sondheim musicals including “Into the Woods” and “Follies,” died on Oct. 15 at her younger daughter’s home in Los Angeles. She was 92.Her older daughter, Rachel Dretzin, said the cause was complications of myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disease.The idea of becoming a casting director came from Hal Prince, the powerful producer of “Fiddler,” after she had left “Fiddler” to raise her two young daughters. He had interviewed several candidates and told Ms. Merlin that most of them “just didn’t like actors,” she told Backstage magazine.“He felt that since I was an actor and a mother, that I might be a good choice,” she added. “He understood that I was raising children and told me that he didn’t care what hours I put in, just as long as I got the work done.”She set to work in 1970, casting replacement actors in “Fiddler” during its last two years on Broadway. For the next two decades, she cast six musicals that were composed by Sondheim and produced (and usually directed) by Mr. Prince on Broadway: “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Side by Side by Sondheim” and “Merrily We Roll Along.”From left, Ms. Merlin, the composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the director Harold Prince and the playwright George Furth during a casting session for the 1981 Broadway musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”Martha Swope/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsHer casting credits also include two other Sondheim musicals, “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Woods”; Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Evita”; and “On the Twentieth Century,” by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Cy Coleman. All those shows except “Into the Woods” were directed by Mr. Prince.“What I found so interesting with Joanna,” James Lapine, who directed “Into the Woods” and wrote its book, based on the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, said in a phone interview, “was her determination to pursue nontraditional casting in the theater, which for me, at a young age, was something I hadn’t thought much about.”Ms. Merlin’s pursuit of diverse casting led Mr. Lapine to choose a Black actress, Terry Burrell, to replace the white one who had played one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, and Phylicia Rashad, who is Black, as a replacement for Bernadette Peters in the leading role of the Witch.In 1986, Ms. Merlin was a founder of the Non-Traditional Casting Project (now the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts), which seeks more opportunities for actors of color and actors with disabilities.Ms. Merlin, noting that there were many talented, nonwhite actors, told The Record of Hackensack, N.J., in 1990. “The reason they should be cast is because they’re good,”Ms. Merlin also cast six films, including Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” (1987), for which she won the Casting Society of America’s Artios Award. She also won an Artios for “Into the Woods.”Ms. Merlin, far right, with Zero Mostel, center, and three other “Fiddler on the Roof” cast members (from left, Maria Karnilova, Tanya Everett and Julia Migenes) backstage after the show’s opening night in 1964. Associated PressJo Ann Dolores Ratner was born on July 15, 1931, in Chicago. Her parents were Russian immigrants: Her father, Harry, owned a grocery store, and her mother, Toni (Merlin) Ratner, helped in the store and became a sculptor in her 60s.She moved to Los Angeles with her parents and her sister when she was 15.She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, for a year in the early 1950s and, after acting in plays in the Los Angeles area in the early and mid-1950s, appeared in her first movie role, a small part in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956).After some more screen work and roles in Off and Off Off Broadway plays, Ms. Merlin made her Broadway debut in 1961 in Jean Anouilh’s “Becket,” as Gwendolen, the mistress of Thomas Becket, one of Britain’s most powerful figures in the 12th century, who was played by Laurence Olivier. Later that year, she returned to Broadway to portray Sigmund Freud’s wife in Henry Denker’s “A Far Country.”After four unsuccessful auditions for a role in Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” which was staged by Jerome Robbins, she auditioned eight times for Mr. Robbins when he was casting “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened in 1964. Although she lacked a strong singing voice, she was cast as Tzeitel, the oldest daughter of Tevye the milkman, the show’s principal character.The syndicated columnist Leonard Lyons wrote that when Ms. Merlin was pregnant in 1965 with her daughter Rachel, Zero Mostel, who played Tevye, told the stage manager: “Joanna’s baby just kicked. Send baby a note — not to kick.”She left the show in 1965 after Rachel was born, returned as Tzeitel a year later, and departed again in 1967 when she was replaced by her understudy, Bette Midler (who was also Rachel’s babysitter). After Julie’s birth in 1968, Mr. Prince made his offer.She continued to act, mostly in films and on television. Her roles included the dance teacher in “Fame” (1980), Julia Roberts’s mother in “Mystic Pizza” (1988) and an old Jewish woman in a short film, “Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn” (2008), which she and Ragnar Freidank adapted from a one-woman play by Ellen Cassedy.TV viewers might be most familiar with Ms. Merlin’s recurring role in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” She played Judge Lena Petrovsky 43 times from 2000 to 2011. No other actor has played a jurist more often in the “Law & Order” franchise. She also appeared, as two different defense lawyers, in five episodes of “Law & Order.”Ms. Merlin as a lawyer in a 1994 episode of “Law & Order.” She also played a judge in 43 episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” setting a record for the franchise.Jessica Burstein/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesHer career as an acting teacher began in 1998 at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a year later she began holding workshops dedicated to the acting technique of her teacher, Michael Chekhov.In the foreword to her book, “Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly Guide” (2001), Mr. Prince wrote: “Her taste is impeccable. In no instance can I remember her recommending anyone less than interesting for a role.”In addition to her daughter Rachel, a documentary filmmaker, and her daughter Julie Dretzin, an actress, Ms. Merlin is survived by five grandchildren. Her first marriage, to Marty Lubner, ended in divorce. Her marriage to David Dretzin ended with his death in 2006 after a car accident in which he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Her sister, Harriet Glickman, died in 2020.For “Pacific Overtures,” which takes place in Japan after Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s visit in 1853 and which had an all-Asian cast, Ms. Merlin engaged in “what may be one of the most poignant talent searches undertaken for a Broadway show,” according to a 1976 article in The New York Times.Racism and economics often forced Asian actors out of the profession at the time. So when she had no luck finding actors in New York, she worked with Asian community and theater groups, Asian newspapers and the State Department to fill the roles. A third of those ultimately signed for the production were nonprofessionals.Among them was the actor Gedde Watanabe, who was a young street singer in San Francisco when she approached him and invited him to audition.“I didn’t believe her,” Mr. Watanabe said. More
In lyrics of rare humor, elegance and compassion, the man who put words to “Fiddler on the Roof” and “She Loves Me” explored the complex emotional architecture of love.The twilight golden years of the Golden Age of musical theater, which archaeologists date from about 1959 to 1981, produced three great lyricists. One, of course, was Stephen Sondheim, setting words to his own music with a neurotic complexity that defined that time and ours. Another was Fred Ebb, the longtime songwriting partner of John Kander, who if poppier in outlook was a genius at prosody, shooting off syllables (“one day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins”) that never failed to bruise.Sheldon Harnick, who died on Friday at 99, was the third, though only one of his musicals, “Fiddler on the Roof,” written with the composer Jerry Bock, was widely known outside the world of theater lovers. But within that world, his subtle craft and character insight were universally acknowledged. Sondheim called his lyrics “impeccable.”As models of humor, elegance and compassion, they could stand to be more widely studied and imitated. That they aren’t is partly the result of the strange bifurcation of Harnick’s career into Bock and post-Bock eras. Though Harnick kept writing well for four decades after the team broke up at the height of its powers in 1970, he never again met with the kind of success that greeted the earlier work. And Bock fell almost completely silent.What a loss! And yet what a success it had been. By the time of the split, Harnick had written the lyrics not just for the worldwide hit “Fiddler” (1964) but also for two smaller yet equally admired scores: “Fiorello!” (1959) and “She Loves Me” (1963). Another handful of his shows with Bock (“The Apple Tree,” “The Rothschilds,” “Tenderloin”) are just as pleasurable, if less profound.I use the word “profound” to describe those shows, and Harnick’s best lyrics, not because they offer earth-shattering insights but because they are perfect expressions of ordinary ones. A jaunty waltz like “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” from “Fiddler,” could not, after all, be more conventional in its framing: Two poor young sisters dream of being fixed up with perfect husbands.But notice how the agenda-like structuring of their wish list, along with the click-lock rhymes, captures in a few lines what “perfect” means to several people involved:For Papa, make him a scholarFor Mama, make him rich as a king.For me, well, I wouldn’t hollerIf he were as handsome as anything.By song’s end, though, alerted to the dangers of overreaching, the girls have turned the image inside out:Maybe I’ve learned:Playing with matchesA girl can get burned.What neither the sisters nor the audience yet know, but Harnick suggests, is how broadly the idea applies. While initiating the marriage plot so central to “Fiddler,” the lyric also introduces a warning about a world soon to go up in flames.Once heard, Harnick’s lyrics seem like the last word on their subjects. In part that’s because of their concision — he typically writes short lines and never too many — and in part because they build an almost impenetrably tight argument through structure and sound. The important words all land on the right beat; the grammar is never distorted to squeeze over a melody. With so little space, every syllable does at least double duty.Double duty is a nice way of looking as well at his main theme, marriage. (Harnick was briefly married to Elaine May; he wed Margery Gray, who survives him, in 1965.) Like most musicals, his and Bock’s keep circling the subject, but with a slyer view of the rage and redemption that go into it.That combo is brilliantly expressed in “Fiorello!” — the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York City from 1934 through 1945. In “The Very Next Man,” the mayor’s long-suffering secretary, Marie, after years of frustrated love, vows to marry whoever shows up.Again, an ordinary setup, yet Harnick captures Marie’s compulsive preoccupation in a neat chain of repeated words, a few perfect rhymes (some of them hidden) and a heartbeat of recurring long o’s:I’m through with mopingMoping from all this pointless hopingHoping he’ll notice me and open his heartTime now to break away and make a new start.That stanza is actually a rewrite; apparently, in 1959, the original version (“And if he likes me/Who cares how frequently he strikes me?”) was considered acceptable and got a big laugh.There’s some justice in the rewrite being better crafted than the original; Harnick’s dramatic sweet spot was letting characters tie themselves in knots to convince themselves of ideas they know are not right. Also a Harnick sweet spot: forcefully untying the knots later. So even though Marie insists at the end of “The Very Next Man” that she’s finished with romance forever —New York papers, take note!Here’s a statement that you can quote:Waiting for ships that never come inA girl is likely to miss the boat.— she of course does marry La Guardia in the end.Harnick’s gift for expressing simply the complexity of emotional architecture finds perhaps its greatest expression in “She Loves Me,” a show essentially built on romantic delusion. In the song “I Don’t Know His Name,” Amalia concludes that her anonymous pen pal — even though he is, in fact, a co-worker she hates — must be an extremely kind and cultured man:When I undertook this correspondence,Little did I know I’d grow so fond;Little did I know our views would so correspond.But as that tight and high-minded stanza gives way to florid fantasizing —He writes his deepest thoughts to meOn Swift, Vermeer and Debussy.De Maupassant, Dumas, Dukas, Dufy, Dufay, Defoe.— we understand she is not yet ready to find love where it really exists. That will come later.In Sondheim’s lyrics, the double bind of attachment is often a source of agitation; in Ebb’s it is often a pummeling. But in Harnick’s word-world, attachment is a pleasant and relatively livable condition, once you get past the drama.Near the end of “Fiddler,” when in the song “Do You Love Me?” Tevye asks his wife that question, she replies, barely singing the words, “Do I what?” It’s a laugh line, defanging or absorbing what might otherwise seem sentimental. By the end of the gentle, forgiving and ruminative number, so typical of Harnick’s gentle, forgiving and ruminative art, you come willingly to the couple’s conclusion, sentimental or not:It doesn’t change a thingBut even soAfter twenty-five yearsIt’s nice to know. More
His collaborations with the composer Jerry Bock also included “Fiorello!” — which, like “Fiddler,” was a Tony winner — and “She Loves Me.”Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist who teamed up with the composer Jerry Bock to write some of Broadway’s most memorable musicals, including the Tony Award winners “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Fiorello!,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. His death was announced by a spokesman, Sean Katz.Mr. Harnick’s lyrics could be broadly funny, slyly satirical, lushly romantic or poignantly moving. He gave voice to a broad range of characters, including starry-eyed young lovers, corrupt politicians, a quarreling Adam and Eve and, in “Fiddler on the Roof,” struggling Jews in early-20th-century Russia.When three unmarried sisters in “Fiddler” confront the village matchmaker, two of them hopeful and the third cynical, they all end up having second thoughts:Matchmaker, matchmaker, plan me no plansI’m in no rush, maybe I’ve learnedPlaying with matches a girl can get burned.So bring me no ring, groom me no groom,Find me no find, catch me no catch.Unless he’s a matchless match!When the leading man in “She Loves Me” is about to meet the woman with whom he’s been trading love letters for months, he practically sings himself into a nervous breakdown:I haven’t slept a wink, I only thinkOf our approaching tête-à-tête,Tonight at eight.I feel a combination of depression and elation;What a state!To waitTill eight.Maria Karnilova and Zero Mostel in the original Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” for which Mr. Harnick and Jerry Bock wrote the score. The show, which opened in 1964, ran for more than 3,200 performances and became the longest-running musical in Broadway history.Bettmann/Getty ImagesMr. Harnick met Mr. Bock in the late 1950s, and the two quickly realized they could work together despite their different temperaments. “I tend to approach things skeptically and pessimistically,” Mr. Harnick told The New York Times in 1990. “Jerry Bock is a bubbling, ebullient personality.”The team would break up after a dozen years over a dispute involving their musical “The Rothschilds.” But the combination worked extremely well while it lasted.The late 1950s was a challenging time for newcomers to the musical stage. The decade’s hit Broadway musicals had included “Guys and Dolls,” “The King and I,” “Wonderful Town,” “My Fair Lady” and “Candide.” “In those days,” Mr. Harnick recalled in a 2004 interview, “lyricists were consciously trying to be more sophisticated and literate. Now we’re in the Andrew Lloyd Webber vein, trying to hit bigger, broader audiences.”Mr. Harnick and Mr. Bock got off to a weak start in 1958 with “The Body Beautiful,” set in the world of prizefighting; it closed after a brief run. But they bounced back decisively the next year with “Fiorello!,” a breezy portrait of one of New York City’s most colorful politicians.“Fiorello!,” which had a book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman and was directed by Mr. Abbott, starred Tom Bosley as Fiorello H. La Guardia, the reformer who was mayor of New York from 1934 to 1945. Its score evoked a time when political corruption was rife.The song “Little Tin Box,” for example, suggests how a crooked party boss (Howard Da Silva) might have responded when a judge asked him how he has managed to buy a yacht, given his modest salary. The boss replies:I am positive Your Honor must be joking.Any working man can do what I have done.For a month or two I simply gave up smokingAnd I put my extra pennies one by oneInto a little tin boxA little tin boxThat a little tin key unlocks.There is nothing unorthodoxAbout a little tin box.“Fiorello!” ran for nearly 800 performances and won three Tony Awards, including the prize for best musical, which it shared with “The Sound of Music.” It was also one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.Jerry Bock, left, with Mr. Harnick in 1970. Their collaboration produced some of Broadway’s most memorable musicals.Barton Silverman/The New York TimesBut the Bock-Harnick team’s biggest success — and one of Broadway’s — was yet to come: “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened in 1964 and ran for more than 3,200 performances. It became the longest-running musical in Broadway history, a record that stood for a decade.Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with a book by Joseph Stein based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, “Fiddler on the Roof” told the story of a Jewish community facing expulsion from a village in the czarist Russian empire, with a focus on Tevye (Zero Mostel), the village milkman, and his family.In addition to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” the score included a number of songs that would soon be regarded as classics, including “Tradition,” “Sunrise, Sunset” and Tevye’s humorously wistful lament “If I Were a Rich Man” (“There would be one long staircase just going up/ And one even longer coming down/ And one more leading nowhere, just for show”).“Fiddler on the Roof” was more than a hit show; it was a phenomenon. It won nine Tony Awards, including one for its score. It was made into a hit movie in 1971, has been performed all over the world, and has had five Broadway revivals, most recently in 2015. (A Yiddish-language production was an Off Broadway hit in 2019 and played a return engagement in late 2022.)Mr. Harnick, left, and Hal Prince, the producer of “Fiddler on the Roof,” in 2015.Damon Winter/The New York TimesAmong the Bock-Harnick team’s other noteworthy efforts was “She Loves Me” (1963), based on the same Hungarian play that was the basis for the movies “The Shop Around the Corner,” “In the Good Old Summertime” and “You’ve Got Mail.” The story of two workers at a perfume shop in Budapest (Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey) who finally realize that they have been trading romantic letters and that they are meant for each other, “She Loves Me” had no showstopping songs and was not initially a big success, closing after 301 performances. But it has grown in popularity after a series of revivals — although Broadway productions in 1993 and 2016 were equally brief.Their other shows included “The Apple Tree” (1966), three musical playlets (including one about Adam and Eve) directed by Mike Nichols, and “The Rothschilds” (1970), based on Frederic Morton’s biography of the Jewish family that rose from the ghetto to become a financial powerhouse.It was a dispute over who would direct “The Rothschilds” that ended the Bock-Harnick partnership. The show’s original director, Derek Goldby, was replaced by Michael Kidd at the urging of Mr. Harnick and others who wanted someone with more musical-theater experience. Mr. Bock was irate.“Jerry felt that Derek had gotten a raw deal,” Mr. Harnick recalled in 1990. “For a while, the feelings between us were very bad.” He added that “things changed for the better” when “Fiorello!” was revived in 1985 at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut and he and Mr. Bock met there to work on it. (It was revived again off Broadway in 2016.)Nonetheless, they never wrote another show together. Mr. Bock died at 81 in 2010.From left, Mr. Prince, Mr. Bock, Mr. Harnick, Fred Ebb and John Kander in 2004, when the Bock-Harnick and Kander-Ebb songwriting teams announced that they were giving their archives to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Yoni Brook/The New York TimesSheldon Mayer Harnick was born on April 30, 1924, in Chicago to Harry and Esther Harnick. His father was a dentist, his mother a homemaker. He took violin lessons as a child, attended music school as a teenager and earned money playing in amateur theatricals. After serving in the Army, he enrolled at the Northwestern University School of Music. He graduated in 1949.He began writing songs while in Carl Schurz High School in Chicago and became seriously interested in songwriting as a career after hearing a recording of Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg’s hit 1947 musical, “Finian’s Rainbow.” At the urging of the actress Charlotte Rae, a fellow Northwestern student, he moved to New York in 1950.Mr. Harnick’s first song in a Broadway show was “The Boston Beguine,” which he wrote — music as well as lyrics — for the revue “Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952.” He wrote numbers for several other revues, including “Two’s Company” (1952), before teaming with Mr. Bock. (One of his compositions from those years, the darkly satirical and deceptively cheerful “The Merry Minuet,” was popularized by the folk music group the Kingston Trio.)Mr. Harnick’s first marriage, to Mary Boatner, was annulled. His second, to the comedian, writer and director Elaine May, ended in divorce. In 1965, he married Margery Gray, an actress whom he had met when she auditioned for his show “Tenderloin.” (She later became a photographer and an artist.) She survives him, as do a daughter, Beth Dorn; a son, Matthew Harnick; and four grandchildren.After his split with Mr. Bock, Mr. Harnick went on to collaborate with other composers. He worked with Mary Rodgers on a 1973 version of “Pinocchio” performed by the Bil Baird marionettes, and with her father, Richard Rodgers, on “Rex,” a musical about King Henry VIII of England that had a brief Broadway run in 1976, with Nicol Williamson in the title role. He also worked with Michel Legrand on two shows: an English-language stage version of the movie musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” produced off Broadway in 1979, and a new adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” staged in Stamford, Conn., in 1982. And he collaborated with Joe Raposo on “A Wonderful Life,” based on the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which has had a number of regional productions since 1986.Mr. Harnick in 2015. His lyrics could be broadly funny, slyly satirical, lushly romantic or poignantly moving. Chad Batka for The New York TimesMr. Harnick also became an accomplished opera translator, providing English librettos for classical works like Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” and Bizet’s “Carmen.”He wrote some original opera librettos as well, including “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines” (1975), with music by Jack Beeson, and “The Phantom Tollbooth” (1995), a collaboration with Norton Juster, the author of the children’s book on which it was based, and the composer Arnold Black. “Lady Bird: First Lady of the Land,” an opera about Lady Bird Johnson, for which he wrote the libretto and Henry Mollicone wrote the music, had its premiere in Texas in 2016 and has been performed in New York and elsewhere.In late 2015, shortly before the latest Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” opened, Mr. Harnick was in the studio making a demonstration record of songs from “Dragons,” an adaptation of a Russian play for which he wrote the book, music and lyrics, and which he had been working on for many years. In an interview with The Times, he said that he had no thoughts of retirement, and that he continued to attend every show on Broadway, as he had for many years. He added that he was working on a new show of his own.“I hope I live long enough to complete it,” he said. “I won’t tell you what idea I have, because you’ll steal it.”Robert Berkvist, a former New York Times arts editor, died in January. Peter Keepnews contributed reporting. More
The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on how to cast an upcoming rendition of “Fiddler on the Roof.”I am involved with a well-regarded community theater that has made significant efforts to diversify its membership, casts and audience. A conflict has arisen over a proposed production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” (Yes, we know, “Fiddler” has been done to death in community theaters. A different issue.) The director proposing the production has committed himself to colorblind casting. Others involved say that, in view of the Jewish community the play is about, they would consider this to be a cultural appropriation. How should we approach this conflict in values? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:“Cultural appropriation” is like one of those discarded medical diagnoses — throat distemper, the vapors — that derive from now-discredited theories, even though they were often applied to genuine ailments. As I’ve argued before, the habit of reducing the complexities of identity and culture to a matter of ownership is an artifact of our own property-rights-obsessed culture. We’ll do better to talk about “disrespect,” and disrespect isn’t the issue here. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the Jewish American duo behind “Fiddler,” certainly weren’t hung up on anything like cultural appropriation; early on, they were in touch with Frank Sinatra for the part of Tevye, and a previous musical of theirs centered on a crusading Christian clergyman.Still, readers will have noticed that controversies over casting — in filmed as well as live entertainment — have become commonplace. They enact a seeming clash between two ethical ideals. So it might be worth taking the time to get a clearer sense of the plot here.On the one hand, there’s a concern to create opportunities for nonwhite performers. Why shouldn’t Black people get to play Hamlet as well as Othello? On the other hand, people have asked for more demographic specificity in representation, often invoking authenticity. This approach — which rightly deplores, say, the old Hollywood tradition of whitewashing Asian roles — encompasses “color-conscious” casting and more, so that an Asian role belongs to an Asian actor, a lesbian role to a lesbian actor, a trans role to a trans actor. By the “mixing” logic of nontraditional casting, the performer’s identity doesn’t matter. By this “matching” logic of authenticity, a performer’s identity matters a lot.Each approach can uphold the value of inclusion, and each may present complications. Nontraditional casting can conjure fun imaginative spaces, modeling a world free of racism and, indeed, race. But casting for a colorblind utopia can be a problem when your aim is to depict racial injustice. The authenticity promised by the matching model, meanwhile, often implies that people who belong to superbroad categories of humanity are interchangeable. This talk of authenticity doesn’t explain why it’s a nonissue when a character of Chinese ancestry is played by an actor of Indonesian ancestry or, indeed, when an Ashanti character, from Ghana, somehow speaks like a Yoruba, from Nigeria.Nontraditional casting is of particular value where there’s a tradition to be bucked; familiar works or historical episodes can be experienced in fresh ways. I love that an open-access approach toward the classics has long been common, including in the amateur realm. In high school, I was cast as the menacing Goldberg in Harold Pinter’s 1957 play, “The Birthday Party.” (“Mazel tov! And may we only meet at simchas!”) It was relevant that the play had already been staged countless times; for variety’s sake, it was easy to discount a performer’s ancestry or age.There’s a useful analogy, speaking of Goldberg variations, in the “historically informed performance” movement in music. It’s a gift to be able to hear baroque works performed with original instruments, hewing to ornamentation styles thought to be characteristic of the period. But who would limit themselves to “authentic” performances of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations — and thus miss the marimba player Pius Cheung’s rendition? Within the realm of musical performance, happily, pluralism reigns.That’s the attitude to take with your “Fiddler.” When a show has been done to death, the task is to bring it to life, so that, in Bock’s own words, it’s “as if the audience were seeing it for the first time.” The truth is that this musical is a piece of American culture, not of shtetl culture; any appropriation was in the making of it in the first place.Mix or match? It depends on the particular ambitions of particular stagings. The ethical error is to suppose only one model is right. If the audience can get over the fact that the people on your musical stage are constantly dancing and bursting into song — as, sadly, people seldom do in real life — it can get over the fact that they might not actually look like villagers from the Pale of Settlement. If you have confidence in your director, let him fiddle with “Fiddler” as he prefers.A Bonus QuestionMy wife drinks heavily, to the point that she often repeats herself while drinking and forgets whole evenings. She already has high blood pressure, probably from drinking. She has a routine exam with a doctor soon. I know that she is not honest with her doctor about how much she drinks or her memory issues. I would like to express my concerns to her doctor, but I know it would anger my wife. What do you think? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:You should express your concerns to your wife in a supportive way, and encourage her to be honest with her doctor. You might get helpful guidance in this by attending a support group for families affected by alcoholism. But the main guidance I have is negative: Inserting yourself into this doctor-patient relationship isn’t the way to go.Readers RespondThe previous column’s question was from a reader who had adopted a dog with her former partner. After their breakup, they agreed she would keep the dog since she was a veterinarian and the dog had various health issues. They also agreed her ex would be allowed to visit the dog. She wrote: “I have since started dating someone new, and he doesn’t like my ex spending time with the dog. I am at a loss about what to do.”In his response, the Ethicist noted: “You made an agreement with your ex about the dog, and though such agreements aren’t beyond renegotiation, you’re right to think that your word should have weight. What’s more, when you are starting a new relationship, it’s important to be clear about boundaries. I would be careful about just giving into your current partner. You’re worried about upsetting him. Equally, shouldn’t he worry about upsetting you?” (Reread the full question and answer here.)⬥A new partner putting up a fuss about honoring an important pre-existing commitment is an enormous red flag. The new partner’s behavior may seem innocuous now, but it is a classic sign of possessiveness that is likely to manifest in worse ways as the relationship progresses. The writer should seriously reconsider the speed with which she is investing in the new relationship. — Megan⬥A secure and healthy relationship allows one to maintain healthy contact with other people. The letter writer should decide what she prefers to do in this situation and see what happens when she makes a choice that goes against her new boyfriend’s wishes. His reaction will reveal everything she needs to know about their possible future together. — Stefanie⬥The Ethicist gave the correct response, but he didn’t state it strongly enough: This new guy is waving a giant red flag. He is asking you to break your word; go against your values (clearly you think of the dog as family deserving family visitation while he thinks of the dog as property) and he is demonstrating marked insecurity. I’m also a vet, and I have plenty of clients who share visitation. It’s unnecessarily cruel to cut off this contact — both to the dog and to the ex. — Maureen⬥Boundaries are definitely the key here. In addition to the boundaries around the new boyfriend controlling who visits her dog, it would also be appropriate to set boundaries with the ex around when he can visit. And clearly explaining to him that she has a new boyfriend may also eliminate the possibility that he’s hanging out with the dog in hopes that you two will get back together. — Brooke⬥I have been in this exact situation, and I loved the Ethicist’s response about boundaries. I was clear with my new boyfriend that I didn’t feel any tie or connection to my ex, but that the ex loved our dogs and allowing him visitation gave me a break and a trusted dog sitter. It was important to me to keep a promise I’d made. That my new boyfriend made this an issue was a big red flag, and I later ended up breaking up with him. — Molly More
Wide acclaim for his portrayal of Tevye helped make him, according to one newspaper, “Israel’s most famous export since the Jaffa orange.”Topol, the Israeli actor who took on the role of the patriarch Tevye, the soulful shtetl milkman at the center of “Fiddler on the Roof,” in his late 20s and reprised the role for decades, died on Thursday at his home in Tel Aviv. He was 87.His son, Omer Topol, confirmed the death. He said in an email that his father had Alzheimer’s disease, which had caused his health to deteriorate over the last year.Topol — born Chaim Topol, he used only his surname throughout much of his professional life — came to international renown heading the cast of the 1971 film version of “Fiddler.” Its director, Norman Jewison, had chosen Topol, then a little-known stage actor, over Zero Mostel, who had created the part on Broadway.The film, for which Topol earned an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award, made him a star. For much of the late 20th century he would be, in the words of The Jerusalem Post in 2012, “Israel’s most famous export since the Jaffa orange.”Topol reprised Tevye in stage productions worldwide for decades, including a 1990 Broadway revival for which he received a Tony nomination. By 2009, he had, by his own estimate, played the character more than 3,500 times.His other films include “Galileo,” the director Joseph Losey’s 1975 adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s stage play, in which he played the title role; “Flash Gordon” (1980), in which he portrayed the scientist Hans Zarkov; and the James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only” (1981), starring Roger Moore, in which he played the Greek smuggler Milos Columbo.On television, Topol played the Polish Jew Berel Jastrow in the 1983 mini-series “The Winds of War” and reprised the role for its sequel, “War and Remembrance,” broadcast in 1988 and 1989.Topol as Tevye in the movie version of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The character is a weary, tradition-bound Everyman who argues with God, bemoans his lot as the penurious father of five daughters and lives warily amid the pogroms of Czarist Russia. United Archives/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesBut it was indisputably for Tevye — the weary, tradition-bound Everyman who argues with God, bemoans his lot as the penurious father of five daughters and lives increasingly warily amid the pogroms of early-20th-century Czarist Russia — that Topol remained best known.“Like Yul Brynner in ‘The King and I’ and Rex Harrison in ‘My Fair Lady,’ Topol has become almost synonymous with his character,” United Press International said in 1989. Over the years, Topol was asked repeatedly whether he ever tired of playing the role.“Let’s face it, it’s one of the best parts ever written for a male actor in the musical theater,” he told The Boston Globe in 1989, when he had played Tevye a mere 700 times or so. “It takes you to a wide range of emotions, happiness to sadness, anger to love.”Throughout his many Tevyes, some critics taxed Topol’s acting as larger than life to the point of self-parody. But most praised his soulful mien and his resonant bass baritone, heard in enduring numbers like “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Tradition” and “Sunrise, Sunset.”By the time Mr. Jewison began work on the “Fiddler” film, Tevye was one of the most coveted roles in Hollywood. The Broadway show, based on stories by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem — with book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and music by Jerry Bock — had been a smash hit since it opened in 1964. It won nine Tony Awards, including best musical, best direction of a musical (for Jerome Robbins) and, for Mr. Mostel, best actor in a musical.“The casting of it was the most agonizing thing I ever went through,” Mr. Jewison told NPR in 2001.Besides Mr. Mostel, aspirants to the screen role included Rod Steiger, Danny Kaye and — in a scenario that can be contemplated only with difficulty — Frank Sinatra.Mr. Jewison’s casting choice was all the more striking in that Topol had not wanted the part in the first place.Topol as the title character in the 1975 film version of Bertolt Brecht’s biographical play “Galileo.” Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesChaim Topol was born in Tel Aviv on Sept. 9, 1935. His parents, Jacob Topol, a plasterer, and Rel Goldman Topol, a seamstress, had fled shtetlach in Eastern Europe to settle in Palestine in the early 1930s. There, Jacob Topol became a member of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization.As a youth, Chaim studied commercial art and trained for a career as a printer. But in 1953, while he was serving in the Israeli Army, an officer overheard him regaling fellow recruits with jokes. He was placed in an army entertainment unit and found his calling there.He spent the next few years touring Israel with the group, entertaining soldiers with songs like “Sprinkler Hora,” a hit in that fledgling state, where making the desert bloom was a national imperative.Discharged in 1956, Topol settled with members of his unit on a kibbutz, where they formed a satirical theater group, Batzal Yarok (the name means “Green Onion”). Its members worked on the land two days a week and onstage for four.“It was great training because we had a very difficult, tired audience,” Topol told U.P.I. “Most of them had been out running tractors and such before performances.”He was later a founder of the Haifa Municipal Theater, where his roles included Petruchio in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” Azdak in Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and Jean in Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” a role that was originated on Broadway by Mr. Mostel. Topol’s first significant international exposure came in the title role of the 1964 Israeli film “Sallah” (also known as “Sallah Shabati”). One of the first film comedies to come out of Israel, it told the tale of a family of Mizrahi Jews — Jews historically from the Middle East and North Africa — uneasily resettled in Israel.“Sallah” won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film; Topol, then in his late 20s, won the Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer for his portrayal of Sallah Shabati, the family patriarch, a man in his 60s.On the strength of that performance, he was asked to play Tevye in a Hebrew-language production of “Fiddler” in Tel Aviv. Unfamiliar with the show, he went to New York to see Mr. Mostel on Broadway.That, Topol, later said, was where his troubles with “Fiddler” began.“Zero was going wild” — even ad-libbing to the audience — he recalled in a 2008 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph. “He said things like, ‘Mrs. Finkelstein, are you yawning because I’m boring you or was it because your husband kept you awake all night?’ I didn’t know what to do with myself. I telegrammed back saying there was no way I wanted to be connected to that show.”But on returning to Israel, Topol saw the Tel Aviv production and had a change of heart. He eventually replaced the actor portraying Tevye and played the role for about a year.Topol in a benefit performance in London in 2013. He was recognized for his charitable work, notably helping to found a holiday camp in Israel for ailing children from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. David M. Benett/Getty ImagesAround that time, the first London production of “Fiddler” was being cast. Someone suggested that the old Jewish actor who had played Sallah Shabati might be a worthy Tevye, and they summoned him to England. When Topol, barely 30, walked into the theater, producers thought they had invited the wrong man. But since he had made the long trip, they relented and let him audition anyway.Topol, who at the time knew “about 50 words of English” by his own account, had learned the songs phonetically from the Broadway cast album. He further impressed the producers with his ability to age 25 years simply through the rigorous control of his carriage.“At 29, I knew I had to restrain some muscles to make sure I didn’t suddenly jump in a way that destroyed the image of an elderly man,” he told The Boston Globe in 2009, in the midst of a multicity U.S. tour of the show. “I walked slower, made sure I wasn’t too erect when I danced. It was quite a job. Now, as I pass the age of 55 by 20 years, I feel totally free to jump and dance as much as I feel like.”Topol opened in London in February 1967, to glowing notices. By then he had jettisoned his first name: The English, he discovered, were flummoxed by the guttural consonant of “Chaim” and pronounced his name “Shame” as often as not.In June, with Israel fighting the Six-Day War, he left the production to return home, where he entertained the troops. (He would make a similar decision in 1991, with the outbreak of the Persian Gulf war, leaving the Broadway revival to be with his family in Tel Aviv.)After seeing the London “Fiddler,” Mr. Jewison made the unexpected decision to cast Topol, still a relative unknown in the United States, in the motion picture.“I wanted a third-generation European actor for the role, a third-generation man who understood the background,” Mr. Jewison told The Globe in 1971. “I did not want a Second Avenue version of Tevye” — a barely veiled swipe at Mr. Mostel and his unstoppable shtick.Topol, who underwent two hours of age makeup every day of the shoot — Mr. Jewison did his bit, contributing white hairs from his beard to be glued over his star’s dark eyebrows — made, in the view of many critics, a most persuasive Tevye.Reviewing the film in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote of him: “He’s a rough presence, masculine, with burly, raw strength, but also sensual and warm. He’s a poor man but he’s not a little man, he’s a big man brought low — a man of Old Testament size brought down by the circumstances of oppression.”Topol married Galia Finkelstein, an actress in his army entertainment unit, in 1956. In addition to their son, they had two daughters, Adi Margalith and Anat Barzilai. All four survive him, along with two sisters, Shosh and Tova, and nine grandchildren.Topol was the author of two books, the memoir “Topol by Topol” (1981) and “Topol’s Treasury of Jewish Humor, Wit, and Wisdom” (1994).His laurels included the Israel Prize, the country’s highest cultural honor, which he received in 2015. The recognition came both for his acting and for his charitable work, notably helping to found Jordan River Village, a holiday camp in Israel for seriously ill children from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Modeled on Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, it opened in 2011.Year in and year out, Topol found the role he knew best to be a source of continuing illumination.“I did ‘Fiddler’ a long time thinking that this was a story about the Jewish people,” he said in a 2009 interview. “But now I’ve been performing all over the world. And the fantastic thing is wherever I’ve been — India, Japan, England, Greece, Egypt — people come up to me after the show and say, ‘This is our story as well.’”Alex Traub More
Barrie Kosky and Yuval Sharon, two of opera’s finest directors, open new productions in Chicago and Detroit.New York City, despite its bona fides as a cultural capital, can be surprisingly provincial when it comes to opera.As ever-fewer international directors pass through with their productions — events that, once upon a time, could reliably be found at Lincoln Center’s festivals or the Brooklyn Academy of Music — and New York City Opera exists as a shell of its former self, the only major player left in town is the Metropolitan Opera, an increasingly adventurous if still conservative house.It’s a different story elsewhere in the United States. While the Met prepares to start its season next week, two other companies opened new productions on Saturday, with imaginative directors who won’t grace the Met stage any time soon but should: at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, a “Fiddler on the Roof” by Barrie Kosky, and at Detroit Opera, a version of “Die Walküre” by Yuval Sharon.I saw both over the weekend, which made for an unlikely pairing: “Fiddler,” Bock and Harnick’s golden-age musical, on Saturday, and the third act of “Walküre,” from Wagner’s “Ring,” on Sunday. But while there were subtle thematic connections between the two, they were more notable for simply happening — the latest examples of conceptual daring and directorial promise beyond New York City limits (among others this season, like productions of Ethel Smyth’s “The Wreckers” in Houston and Dylan Mattingly’s “Stranger Love” in Los Angeles).Kosky’s “Fiddler” staging reveals the musical as the masterpiece that it is: perennially relevant, smartly constructed and richly complicated.Todd RosenbergKosky’s “Fiddler” is an import from the Komische Oper in Berlin, the house he ran for a decade before stepping down this year. It’s both a preview — he will direct one musical each of the next five seasons — and a glimpse at his range as one of Europe’s leading directors, an artist capable of shattering minimalism, in productions like “Kat’a Kabanova” at the Salzburg Festival in August, and archaeological curiosity, in the obscure operettas he has reintroduced to Germany.There are hallmarks of his showman style throughout this “Fiddler,” but perhaps the most Koskyesque accomplishment here is his revealing of the musical as the masterpiece that it is — perennially relevant, smartly constructed and richly complicated — rather than what many critics have seen as borscht belt kitsch. His staging, in which no emotion is ever forced, is funny only in the way that life can be: dark humor in the face of absurdity, joy at a harmless misunderstanding.Most natural, perhaps, is the way in which Kosky’s take on the musical — unaltered, but for welcome Yiddish additions — unfolds as an act of memory, at once melancholy and warm. It begins with something like a summoning of the past: A child (Drake Wunderlich) rolls across the stage on a scooter, beats emanating from his headphones. At the center is a wardrobe; and inside is a violin, on which the boy begins to play the show’s opening theme. He pauses, and the tune continues with a whistle from within.Out from the wardrobe steps Tevye — Steven Skybell, who played the role in the recent Yiddish-language “Fiddler” Off Broadway and who again lends the character the sculptural dimensions of a Shakespeare protagonist — then the rest of the villagers from Anatevka. Among them are a wealth of sympathetic, skilled performers: Debbie Gravitte as a resilient Golde; Lauren Marcus, Austen Danielle Bohmer and Maya Jacobson as her and Tevye’s pathbreaking daughters; Drew Redington as a meek then audacious Motel; Adam Kaplan as a brazen yet desperate Perchik; Michael Nigro as a honeyed Fyedka; and more.Many more: This is a “Fiddler” beyond Broadway proportions, with a cast large enough to fill out a shtetl and a full orchestra, conducted with committed enthusiasm and dancelike flexibility by Kimberly Grigsby. Yet while the forces were operatic, the scenic design, by Rufus Didwiszus, wasn’t; the first act sprang out of and around a unit set of wardrobes and dressers stacked like a barricade, some of their doors and drawers opened to reveal lingering clothes, as if they had been hastily emptied and gathered in a public square. You could imagine it as a memorial.To what? Take your pick. “Fiddler” is specific, a tale of change coming rapidly to the traditions of Anatevka in the early 20th century; yet it has resonated time and again, whether for its themes of rigidity amid progress or for its depictions of intolerance and exile. The last Broadway revival, in 2015, was haunted by the Syrian refugee crisis. This year, it’s impossible to see the show’s characters — inhabitants of present-day Ukraine — haphazardly packing up their lives for an unknown future and not think of the war there.Yuval Sharon’s “The Valkyries,” at Detroit Opera, is presented on a bifurcated stage in which singers perform in front of a green screen, below a video produced live.Mary Jaglowski/Detroit OperaAnd yet Kosky’s staging is also entertaining. Otto Pichler’s choreography, a nod to and break from Jerome Robbins’s original, left the audience on Saturday roaring. And the production’s nearly three hours breeze by. It is the finest “Fiddler” I’ve seen, one that could be adapted with ease and success on Broadway — where, in addition to the Met, Kosky belongs.Sharon is also woefully absent from New York’s stages. The brightest director in the United States, he put on a drive-through “Götterdämmerung” in a Detroit parking garage when live performance was virtually nonexistent during the pandemic and, as artistic director of Detroit Opera, has made that city an opera destination — along with Los Angeles, where his company the Industry has created the most innovative, original productions of recent years.His excerpt from “Die Walküre” — the 85-minute third act, called here “The Valkyries” — reflects Wagner’s ambitions for the work’s stage magic, but also the state of opera performance in our time, by presenting it as a sci-fi movie filmed against a green screen and rendered live with the help of Kaitlyn Pietras and Jason H. Thompson from PXT Studio. Yet a casual audience member could also enjoy it at face value, a self-contained drama with the subtlety and punch of short fiction.The production places the “Ring” in the metaverse, with Valhalla as a digital creation whose back story is recounted by Sigourney Weaver in a video introduction. Having a queen of sci-fi make this cameo is among the show’s campy touches, like Carlos J. Soto’s winking costumes, which suggest “Tron” and its low-budget cousins of the 1970s and ’80s.On the bifurcated stage, singers (accompanied by Andrew Davis leading a reduced but undiminished orchestration by David Carp, to accommodate the theater’s smaller pit) perform in front of the green screen — on green props, and supported by stage hands in green body suits, who, for example, wave capes during the “Ride of the Valkyries.” At the same time, the film, which reflects changes in scale and placement on a digital landscape, is shown above. The singers, especially the soprano Christine Goerke, still earning her title as a reigning Brünnhilde, rise to the challenge of the close-ups with actorly delivery; she, facing an indefinite slumber atop a mountain as punishment, sobs with audibly shallow breathing.At quick glance, Sharon’s production has the appearance of window dressing; the action ultimately unfolds in a conventional way. But, as ever, the medium is the message.“The Valkyries” could be seen as a meditation on opera in the 21st century: the proliferation of video in stagings, as well as pandemic-era livestreams and the genre of studio productions that grew out of them. What, now, is a live performance? Sharon provokes a tension of perception, with the eye and ear unsure of whether to focus on the singers or the screen. What is lost, and gained, in their interplay? He doesn’t offer an answer so much as lay out a balance sheet that the audience is left to settle.If Sharon does make a case, it’s for the durability of an opera’s essence. No matter the format, “Walküre” is a rending portrait of love, family and regret; Sunday’s performance wasn’t any different. And, as in “Fiddler,” the emotional core of “The Valkyries” was drawn out in a way that was unforced and honest, yet stylistically distinct. New York would be lucky to have either show. More
The prolific actor, writer and photographer just turned 90, in a 1970s-style West Village loft that speaks to his many passions.Rain threatened on a recent Tuesday morning, and there was a chill in the air. But inside Joel Grey’s loft in Manhattan’s West Village, it was spring.Yellow roses — some doing a solo act, some in a clump — pink and yellow tulips, and pink and purple hyacinths sat in various containers on the round table in the open kitchen, on the glass coffee table, on a side table and on the skinny, rectangular dining table. Yet more multicolored roses, splayed atop a cabinet, were — how to put this nicely? — pushing up daisies.Mr. Grey, who won a Tony in 1967 and an Oscar in 1973 for his ineradicable portrayal of the feverishly rouged M.C. in the musical “Cabaret,” stood at the kitchen counter trying to arrange a new grouping of tulips. (He spends $50 a week on flowers at the local Whole Foods.) But these seemed to be an uncooperative bunch. “You kids are being difficult,” he told them, turning away for a minute to say hello to a visitor.Based on the evidence of an admittedly small sample — a reporter, a photographer, a publicist — the eternally pixieish Mr. Grey greets guests as though they were the winning lottery tickets that he thought he’d lost.But perhaps some of this ebullience was situational. “You know, it’s almost my 90th birthday,” he announced, clapping his hands like a delighted child, and leading the way to his office. There, on a hanger, was an orange sweatshirt with “1932” emblazoned in large black numbers on the front. (For the record, April 11 was the day.)“A darling friend gave a sweatshirt to Duane Michals for his 90th birthday, in February,” Mr. Grey said, referring to the photographer. “And I told her, ‘I want one too!’”The Tony- and Oscar-winning actor Joel Grey lives in a loft in the West Village, where he is surrounded by art and the souvenirs of his travels.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesJoel Grey, 90Occupation: Actor, writer, photographerNot by design: “My style is not eclectic, but rather serendipity. I’m truly Mr. Serendipity. Nothing I’ve bought was planned. Everything in here is about the moment.”He bought the apartment in the late 1990s, based on a floor plan.“I wanted to be in the Village. It was a whole new world to me,” said Mr. Grey, who had been living on the top floor of the Hotel Des Artistes on West 67th Street in an apartment that was put together, room by room, from former maids’ quarters, and had a skylight and a terrace. “But my brother told me, ‘You can’t live down there.’ At the time, it was very scrubby and scruffy on the streets near the West Side Highway. The place where the boats came in — the piers — it was all very undone.”But what was scrubby and scruffy when measured against proximity to the Hudson River? Mr. Grey watches it roll by from the built-in daybed where he drinks his morning coffee and reads his morning paper: “It’s my friend and my partner and my serenity.”He was further captivated by the “wet-clay” possibilities of a new-construction building. “It was about open space,” he said, “which I found so alluring, and about the mystery of how to make it a home. It was an adventure.”Mr. Grey’s well-traveled Vuitton trunks have been repurposed as side tables.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesA very personal adventure. There’s no interest here in showing off designers or making vignettes. Minimalist and neutral, with clean lines, columns and concrete floors, the apartment is part 1970s SoHo loft, part midcentury-modern design, with a cowhide rug on the floor of the bedroom, a cowhide-covered butterfly chair and a Jens Risom woven chair.“But I don’t think about periods,” Mr. Grey said. “I think about exclamation points.”Perhaps the exclamation points are the works of art: by, among others, Richard Tuttle, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Joan Miró, Sally Gall and Mr. Michals. Woodcarvings of antelope heads stand in a row on a windowsill. African sculptures dot the piano. There’s a galley wall in the primary bathroom.Mr. Grey is, of course, best known as an actor and director (of the acclaimed 2018 Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof”), and he continues to perform. He is part of the cast of “The Old Man,” a series scheduled to premiere on FX in mid-June. “I am not the old man,” he said, before anyone has a chance to ask.When Mr. Grey directed a Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof,” his assistant gave him an appropriately themed pincushion. Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesBut over the past dozen and a half years, Mr. Grey has also made a name for himself as a photographer. His work has been the focus of gallery shows and of several monographs. His most recent book of photographs, “The Flower Whisperer,” published in 2019, paid tribute to the nether regions of daisies, sunflowers, lilies, daffodils et al.Stuck inside during the pandemic, Mr. Grey began looking for — and photographing — the faces he saw in dried petals. They will be the subject of his next book. “Look up there. It’s a whole new world,” he said, pointing to a detail in the image of a dead blossom hanging on a partition in his office. “I see a bow tie.”Art and design have long been a part of his life. Growing up in Cleveland, the 8-year-old Joel fantasized about getting lost at the local museum and shut in overnight. Later, as work began taking him out of town, he invariably returned to New York with crafts. When, at the age of 19, he went to London to play the Palladium, he visited Positano, Italy, “and now I am looking at these monkey candlesticks I brought home,” he said, nodding toward the coffee table.A friend gave Mr. Grey a sweatshirt as a 90th-birthday present.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesShelves in Mr. Grey’s closet/dressing room display marionettes from Mexico; figures, bowls, vases and baskets from European ports; and, a little closer to home, collages made by his mother, Grace.The mother-son relationship, as chronicled in Mr. Grey’s 2016 memoir, “Master of Ceremonies,” was complicated. But it was because of Grace, he said, that even as a struggling actor, he cared deeply about his surroundings.“I always did up my apartments, even if I only spent a dollar and a quarter,” he said. “My mother and father taught me the importance of being professional and of making a place for myself. And my mother was all about making a space for art.”He has made the place and made the space. “It was all about, ‘Let’s figure this out,’” Mr. Grey said. “‘Let’s dream a little here.’ I’m a big believer in dreams.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More
The director of ‘The Music Man’ pays more attention to the furnishings onstage than to those at home. But that suits him fine.Jerry Zaks has never been much for turning an apartment into a home.He likes things clean, and he likes things comfortable. But beyond those basics, his interest kind of stalls out. An actor turned four-time Tony Award-winning director, he’s too wrapped up in second-act curtains to ponder living room curtains.“I think most of my places have looked like the dorm when I was in college, because I’ve been too busy working and getting the work done,” said Mr. Zaks, 75, who most recently shepherded the Broadway revival of “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and the musical adaptation of the film “Mrs. Doubtfire” (which resumes performances April 14 after a Covid-related hiatus). Among his two dozen other directing credits: “The House of Blue Leaves,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” the Steve Martin comedy “Meteor Shower” and the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!”The celebrated Broadway director Jerry Zaks, whose current projects are “The Music Man” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. Photographs, ephemera and Hirschfeld caricatures, including one of himself, hang in his kitchen.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“When I’m going home,” he continued, “I’m not escaping from anything except pure pleasure, which is the theater or my rehearsal room.”Jerry Zaks, 75Occupation: DirectorMaking the scene: “I’ve never paid a lot of attention to how my apartment looks. I’ve paid more attention to the set design of my show. I love participating in the creation of the world that is going to house the show I’m doing.”Since moving to New York in 1969 after graduate school, Mr. Zaks has lived uptown and down, in hovels and in storied buildings like the El Dorado, where the apartment he shared with his wife, the actress Jill Rose, and two daughters overlooked Central Park and was big enough that he could chalk up a constitutional — he is an obsessive walker — simply by striding from one end of the space to the other.Mr. Zaks has a unique copy of “Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports.” It contains a meticulously crafted gag entry written by a friend about one Jerry Zaks, “after Tiger Woods, the most exciting amateur golfer of the 1990s…”Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut time marches on, and with the dissolution of his marriage, Mr. Zaks did, too. He moved to one rental near the El Dorado, then another, to stay in proximity to his children, now adults. In 2008, he found a more permanent perch, in the shape of a two-bedroom co-op with prewar details, on West End Avenue.At the time, Mr. Zaks was in Los Angeles directing episodic television, and his then girlfriend had taken up the apartment search, sending him photos and descriptions of appealing prospects.“When I came back to New York, I went once and took a look, and said, ‘Let’s do it,’” recalled Mr. Zaks, who commented very favorably on a renovation by the seller that combined the kitchen and dining room into one warm, open space.That same girlfriend helped Mr. Zaks outfit the apartment. “On stage, I want to know how I get in and out of the living room. I want to know how the couch relates to the table,” he said. “But for my own apartment, I didn’t really get involved. She would show me pictures, and I would say, ‘This looks good.’”A caramel-colored leather sofa and easy chair looked good to Mr. Zaks. So did an Arts-and-Crafts sideboard, a free-standing bookcase of similar style and a rectangular wood dining table.Among his favorite possessions: a travel bar set once owned by Zero Mostel.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“Some of the earliest work on ‘Hello, Dolly!,’ ‘Meteor Shower,’ ‘The Music Man’ and ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ was done around that table,” he said. “I don’t need an office. I just need a good kitchen table.”Mr. Zaks would like to be a minimalist, but not quite yet. In a corner of the kitchen, which is painted a nice shade of coral, a tall stack of scripts and research material related to “The Music Man” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” seems to be awaiting further instructions. “I haven’t thrown them out yet because I can’t,” he said.Covering the walls are framed notes and letters of appreciation from colleagues like Neil Simon and Harold Prince (“I loved him because he was the last person in show business to call me ‘kid,’” Mr. Zaks said). There are several Al Hirschfeld caricatures, including one of Mr. Zaks in 1980, when he appeared on Broadway in the musical revue “Tintypes,” as well as ephemera like a two-page spread from the script of Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker.” (The source material for “Hello, Dolly!,” it was a gift from the administrators of the playwright’s estate when Mr. Zaks’s “Dolly” revival opened.)The cache of show posters — “my little shrine to myself” — represents Mr. Zaks both as performer (fun fact: he was a replacement Kenickie in the original production of “Grease”) and director. “This is a partial display including my greatest successes and, well, let’s put it this way: You’ve got hits and you’ve got misses,” he said. “Hits are better, but you’d be a fool not to remember the misses, because you work just as hard on them.”All pretty impressive, but nothing has quite the resonance of a photograph of a 20-something Jerry Zaks posing with his parents and Zero Mostel. Mr. Zaks was playing Motel the tailor in a tent-theater summer tour of “Fiddler on the Roof”; Mr. Mostel was reprising his Tony-winning performance as Tevye, while taking on an additional role: rumbustious mentor to his young castmate.Meet Mr. Zaks’s friends Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony and George. Katherine Marks for The New York Times“When I was a junior at Dartmouth and declared I was going to be an actor, my parents were very disappointed — a waste of an Ivy League education and all that,” Mr. Zaks said. “They were afraid for me. They were Holocaust survivors, and there was a Nazi around every corner.”But of course, they came to see their son in action, and afterward, went backstage to meet Mr. Mostel. “For 20 minutes, they spoke Yiddish to Zero, tummeling back and forth,” he recalled. “And finally my father asked, ‘Is my son going to be all right in this farkakte business?’ And Zero answered, ‘He’s going to be more than all right.’ And then we took the picture.”“That was the beginning of my parents accepting what I was committed to,” added Mr. Zaks, who counts among his favorite opening-night gifts a travel cocktail bar set that once belonged to Mr. Mostel.A while back, he was returning from a favorite neighborhood spot, Silver Moon Bakery, when he ran into a fellow co-op resident, Melissa Gooding, who was out walking her dog. “She moved in shortly after I did, but we didn’t get to know each other closely until last year,” Mr. Zaks said.He now divides his time between their two apartments. On the mantel in Ms. Gooding’s apartment are Mr. Zaks’s four Tony statuettes, along with a Mr. Abbott award, a tribute named for the legendary man of the theater, George Abbott. On a wall in the hall is a framed photo snapped by the stage doorman at the Winter Garden Theatre, home of “The Music Man”: Mr. Zaks huddling with Ms. Foster and Mr. Jackman at the end of a performance.“It’s hard to talk about without getting emotional,” he said. “This is my everything.”“The relationship I have with my actors is the most precious thing I have outside of family,” he continued, “and it’s encapsulated in this one image.”Mr. Jackman and Ms. Foster had the photo blown up as a gift for Mr. Zaks. He may not care much about décor, but he knows what makes him feel at home.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More
