Tom Dugan in the world premiere of Tevye in New York! now playing at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Photo by Lawrence K. Ho
By Steve Simmons – posted at 5:15 p.m., Saturday, June 26, 2021
Playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in high school was life-changing says actor/playwright Tom Dugan.
Now, 45 years later, he’s returning to the role in his latest one-man play Tevye in New York! to christen the new outdoor stage at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. After officially opening yesterday, the show will run at through Sunday, July 25 at 8 p.m. (For details, see below.)
Playing Tevye the Dairyman — the Russian Jew who eked out a living to support his wife and many daughters of marital age, faced the constant threat of Czarist pogroms, bemoaned his fate in conversations with God and faced the clash of tradition and modernity, parental authority and love –“was the role that made me decide to become an actor,” says Dugan, who took on the part in 1978 at Rahway High School in New Jersey.
Left-Tom Dugan rehearsing the role of Tevye for the Rahway High School Production of Fiddler on the Roof in 1978.
“The arc of the character is a such a gratifying experience,” remembers Dugan. “It satisfies all the appetites as an actor, there’s drama, comedy, the heroic nature of the man, and even singing—it’s got so much.”
Revisiting Tevye
Years later, as a Hollywood actor in the 1990s, “gigs started to slow down,” and Dugan started thinking about writing his Tevye piece. With one play under his belt, the autobiographical comedy Oscar to Oscar, as he read the original Sholem Aleichem stories he realized “Tevye was so much juicier than the musical allowed.”
He “fell deeply in love” with the character, but didn’t have the wherewithal to get the rights to an Aleichem story about Tevye’s daughter Shprintze he was interested in. “I was disappointed because it meant I was going to have to try to write something original, which I didn’t think I had in me.”
He’d always wanted to be writer, and after tackling his own material, he realized he did have it in him. Seven original plays later, including The Trial of Robert E Lee, Jackie Unveiled, Wiesenthal, The Ghosts of Mary Lincoln, Tell Him It’s Jackie and Frederick Douglass: In the Shadow of Slavery, he decided to revisit Tevye as a full-length one-man show. With the help of his lawyer, he was able to secure rights from the Sholom Aleichem Family Foundation and began writing the script four years ago.
Expanding the story
Dugan describes his piece as “not exactly a sequel, but an interesting hybrid.” He took Aleichem’s original stories, along with the understanding that audiences know the characters from stage and film, and worked to satisfy theatergoers and himself. “Like a fiddler on the roof I try to keep the balance,” he says.
So, after Tevye and his family are “pushed off the edge of the earth,” they end up in New York City. Dugan interweaves stories for the plays’ beloved characters—Tevye now runs a small grocery, and his daughters work in the garment district, Yente the matchmaker even gets a mention.
In Aleichem’s original stories, Tevye’s wife Golde and Tzeitel’s husband the tailor Motel Kamzoil both die. “You can see why they didn’t put that in the musical,” says Dugan, “it’s sad enough.” While those deaths illuminate Dugan’s play, he has also created storylines for butcher Lazar Wolf and Tevye’s other daughters including Chava, “who doesn’t make it to New York, but lives and marries a rabbi,” and Beilke, “who was so beautiful she could stop traffic,” says Dugan. The result, he says, “is a piece that is 50 percent comedy and 50 percent drama.”
Unlike many one-person shows where the star assumes several personas, Dugan solely performs Tevye and has grown the beard. “Tevye’s a great storyteller and audiences will feel like the stage is crowded with people.”
Left-Tom Dugan as Tevye announcing his latest business enterprise in Tevye in New York! Photo by Lawrence K. Ho.
When the play opens, it’s July 4, 1914, at the corner of Orchard and Delancey in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the neighborhood where Tevye and his family settle after fleeing Russia in 1909. Tevye is waiting for the Independence Day Parade, led by President Woodrow Wilson. He’s planning to use the occasion to announce a new business venture with an old acquaintance from Anatevka, and to use the parade as advertisement.
In between keeping the crowd fed with pickles from a barrel and ice cream bars, Tevye entertains the gathered merchants and residents with his life story.
A Changing World
Much of the conflict in Fiddler on the Roof comes from Tevye dealing with a changing world he cannot accept. He has to cope with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters who want to marry for love.
Left-Tom Dugan’s Tevye makes his first ever phone call in Tevye In New York! Photo by Lawrence K. Ho.
Dugan’s play thrusts Tevye even further from the life he left behind. Tevye makes his first phone call and while doing research for the play, Dugan discovered that it was common at the time for people to be hit by newly introduced automobiles. An accident plays a part in the show.
Tevye and his family are also exposed to the Reform Movement in Judaism, “that became popular in New York and took hold,” says Dugan, “and so they struggle with what traditions to keep and ‘what’s not good for you anymore,’ and learn that maybe it’s time for some new traditions.”
Tevye’s challenges don’t stop with his older daughters “and at one point his daughters understand what’s going on even more than he does as they confront the union and suffragette movement,” Dugan says. “I try not to get preachy, but it’s clear that women had a tough time in 1914.”
Themes for today
Dugan puts the emphasis on tolerance “in a roundabout sort of way,” he says. “A moment when a high-class Jew looks down on Tevye’s family has tragic results.”
Given the story, Dugan couldn’t skip over the immigrant experience. His Tevye talks of landing at Ellis Island, and sailing past “the big green lady.” He plans to include a recitation of The New Colossus, the Emma Lazarus poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty with its famous line “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” “It’s never been interpreted the way it was written and it’s saying, ‘okay, kick out these valueless people. You do that. Throw them out. They’re worth something and that’s what makes this land great.’ It’s an emotional part of the show, and I hope the message is not lost,” Dugan adds.
An example of this diversity is the crowd waiting for the parade, “living together out of necessity and everyone getting along,” says Dugan. There’s Mr. Puccini, Mrs. Kim, Cross-Eye Johnson, the shoeshine man; Mrs. Murphy and purveyors of kosher wine and bagels whose descendants are still in business.
Doing The Research
The play is the result of extensive research on Dugan’s part including reading the original Tevye’s Daughters stories, which names six of his seven daughters (Beilke, Chava, Hodel, Shprintze, Taybele and Tzeitel), Aleichem’s autobiography From the Fair—” that was extremely helpful,”—My Father, Sholom Aleichem by his youngest daughter Marie Waife-Goldberg and even Wonder of Wonders – A Cultural History of Fiddler On The Roof by Alisa Solomon.
A special venue
The play was originally set to premiere last March at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center in Boca Raton, Fla., but according to Dugan, when Wallis Artistic Director Paul Crewes heard the script was finished, “he asked if there was any way to wrestle it away from Florida. So, I went back and said, ‘listen, I have this opportunity,’ and they let me out of my contract. They said, ‘great, but you have to bring it back here afterwards.”
The play’s world premiere marks the opening of The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts’ Summer @ The Wallis in a specially constructed pop-up outdoor performance space on the center’s Promenade Terrace with tiered seating designed for expandable seating with a first row 12 feet from its raised stage–and infrastructure to house lighting and sound–that will accommodate 100 socially distanced audience members each night.
“They build this enormous bleacher-like structure with risers. It looks like the circus has come to town,” Dugan jokes, “and I’m excited as hell. It’s a double thrill to debut this play and return to live theatre.”
Left -Co-director Michael Vale. Photo by Dave Mynne
The production is co-directed and designed by Michael Vale of the National Theatre of Great Britain among others. “His set is pretty cool,” says Dugan. “Paul suggested we might be a good team and he flew out and we got along very well,” says Dugan.
Telling Wiesenthal’s Story
Dugan’s last involvement with The Wallis was the digital engagement of his one-man show Wiesenthal last October. (https://stevesimmonswrites.com/tom-dugan-brings-wiesenthal-back-to-the-wallis-this-time-its-virtual/)
The play takes famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal from his time in concentration camps to learning the trade. Before closing his office, he discusses famous cases from Adolph Eichmann, Franz Stangl, the former commandant of the Treblinka death camp; the search for Karl Josef Silberbauer, the officer who arrested Anne Frank; through the catching of his last one, Alois Brunner, responsible for sending more than 100,000 European Jews to ghettos and concentration camps.
The book of the play, including the script, production photos, talk-back questions, a study guide, and a biography of Wiesenthal, was released at a launch event Monday at the Skirball Cultural Center. Published by Bashert Books Press, it’s available on Amazon.
On the strength of Dugan’s screenplay, producer Dan Kapow (The Haunting of Hill House, Joe Exotic) has optioned Wiesenthal for a feature film. “It’s really exciting,” Dugan says. “It would be a great part for Alan Arkin or Ben Kingsley.”
Connections
Another reason he wanted to return to Tevye was the success he had with Wiesenthal. He took the show across the country to New York, Canada and Europe. “Jewish audiences really appreciated the show, they’d hear the name and be intrigued. “So, I rewrote Tevye it seems like a billion times, and I’m hoping it will have the same success and tour as well.”
While Dougan delights in portraying these acclaimed Jewish figures, he is Irish. “My wife Amy is Jewish, our children are Jewish, and we are all members of Temple Judea in Tarzana,” reports Dugan. “Also, my father served as an American infantryman in Europe during World War II, and I asked him a lot of questions about what happened there.”
He’s quick to point out the Irish-Jewish connections. “When Irish immigrants were pouring into Manhattan, they didn’t live in isolation,” Dugan says, “but in neighborhoods with Jews, Italians, Poles and Chinese. And they all mixed in their off time. And some Irish family was taught by some Jewish family, ‘if you want to keep a lot of kids fed, try brisket.’ Well, they got the recipe wrong and boiled it and called it corned beef, a strictly American dish.”
Ticket holders will receive information on COVID-19 procedures including required health screenings for entry, mobile ticket delivery and digital programs.
Tickets are $75 each. To purchase, and for more information, visit TheWallis.org/Tevye or call 310-746-4000 (Tue.-Fri. 9:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.) There will be no ticket sales available on the day of the event.
Steve Simmons is an accomplished writer and editor who writes about a wide array of topics including entertainment. His successful experience at the Beverly Hills Courier and other publications set the stage for his blog. Contact Steve at steve.simmons0211@gmail.com or 626-788-6734.
