Harry Goz and Zero Mostel

[Dfgtoronto]

Posted: 12/26/16 at 2:25pm

Did anyone have an opportunity to see both Harry Goz and Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof? If so, I would be very interested to hear your impressions of both performances and how one compared with the other. 

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 12/26/16 at 3:22pm

It's true I saw both, but will have little helpful to offer you in the way of a comparison: FIDDLER (with Harry Goz as star) was my very first Broadway show back in '67 I believe, at the tender age of 11. Nuances? Subtleties? Impressions? I can offer nothing but that Tevye then seemed no bigger or smaller to me than anyone else onstage. I loved the whole evening, and particularly the beats of pure theater magic: when Tevye's house spun open to show its interior, and when the other shtetl families materialized  on different stage levels from behind the scrim to join on SABBATH PRAYER. 

Cut to the revival starring Mostel which I saw in what? 1977? By then I knew the show well, from cast recordings and particularly the movie which I thought was more romantically European than the stage show, but also beautiful. I also had read all the legendary stories about Mostel's  behavior in the original show. Seeing him now he was a giant onstage, dwarfing everyone else there. He was larger than life in voice and manner and knew he was, which doesn't really comport with either Stein or Sholom Aleichem's more humanist view of Tevye. The show also seemed full of more Lower East Side-style Yiddishkeit-- the "Ketskill" inflections to the jokes and very New York sound to the voices. (The contrast to Topol's Israeli kibbutznik Tevye was vast.) Even so, it was a gift to see Mostel The Great in his greatest role. Whether it really served the play is another question.

[Dfgtoronto]

Posted: 12/26/16 at 5:08pm

This response was very helpful.  Thank you!