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Raising the fiddler's roof By Haim Handwerker Tags: Fiddler on the Roof  NEW YORK - Harvey Fierstein, one of Broadway's biggest stars, bowed to the audience at Minskoff Theater and thanked them in a choked voice. Standing next to him with tears in her eyes was Rosie O'Donnell, an actress turned aggressive talk show hostess. That was a year ago, after the last performance of the play "Fiddler on the Roof," which opened in 2004 and was put on some 800 times. The production was deemed one of the most successful in the history of the play, which had already been staged many times all over the world. There was something else that made the musical unique. Fierstein, who played Tevye the milkman, is a homosexual whose roles include an appearance dressed as a woman in the play "Hairspray." And O'Donnell is a lesbian. It is doubtful that this is how Sholem Aleichem imagined the play based on his book, "The Tevye Stories and Others." Fierstein and O'Donnell invited three elderly men onto the stage: Joseph Stein, who wrote the libretto for the musical; Jerry Bock, who composed the music; and Sheldon Harnick, who wrote the lyrics for the songs. "It was fun to work together," says Stein, 96, in an interview in his Manhattan apartment on Park Avenue. "Even today, we're friends. Occasionally we get together for dinner. Sometimes we go together to see a Broadway show. I'm crazy about plays and musicals. But to tell you the truth, today they put on very trivial things on Broadway. At least the older plays had a message. They wanted to tell the audience something. That's what we did in 'Fiddler on the Roof.' If you go to see 'South Pacific' or 'Gypsy,' which are being shown again, you'll see that they have a message. One is about the relationship between races, and the other is about the mother-daughter relationship. The new musicals are entertaining; they don't have very much to say. But there is room for all of them." Advertisement 'Fire the translator' Stein, who wrote 12 musicals, including "Zorba," recalls that he, Bock and Harnick wanted to work together on a musical and searched for a subject. "My father read me a book when I was a kid about Tevye the milkman. I didn't remember the details, but I really liked the book. I started looking for it and only after a lot of searching did I find a copy that was published in 1949. I read it and became excited all over again. I was enchanted by the atmosphere in the shtetl and by the characters." Stein walks up to the bookshelf and pulls out a copy of the book. "You can see all the comments I made. It wasn't easy to write the play. The book is written entirely in the narrator's voice and I had to create monologues. It took me four months to write the play, but overall, the project took two to three years. It was also very complicated to find a producer for the play. No one believed that a play about life in the shtetl would interest anyone. One producer told me, 'I like the play, but who'd come see it after we bring in the Hadassah ladies?' The truth is that I thought he was right. "Luckily for us, the three of us also had other careers. I, for example, wrote for radio and television programs, including Sid Caesar's show, whose writers also included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. Later on, I also started writing for the theater. I wrote things that I enjoy writing. I never looked for a smash hit. Whoever writes in order to have a smash hit falls on his face." Harold Prince, who produced the first version of "Fiddler on the Roof," which opened in 1964, had trouble raising the money for it. Nevertheless, the musical, which first opened in Detroit and Washington, became a huge hit on Broadway, starring Zero Mostel. It broke records and ran for almost 10 years, until the musical "Grease" ousted it from its top ranking. Since then, the play has been produced another three times on Broadway, each time successfully. "I'm sure that many of the producers who rejected us later swallowed their hats," says Stein. The play was also performed in Israel. Did you see it? Stein: "Yes, and I had a problem with it. I came to see the rehearsal. The language the actors spoke was of course Hebrew, and I don't know Hebrew. But it seemed to me that the texts were too long. I asked the director of the Habimah Theater, what's going on here? He told me that I don't have to worry. "The translator decided to make the play funnier and he added things of his own. This really upset me. I said: 'Stop the show and fire the translator.' I didn't care what nonsense he added. So they got another translator, who I understand did a better job and later became successful in Israel." Stein saw versions of the musical in Canada, Japan, Holland and Austria. "In the first years, I wanted to see every production anywhere," he says. "Then I calmed down somewhat. I didn't see the last production in London, which I was told was very successful. Today it's harder for me to travel. In Japan, the production was a huge success, and even Tevye, played by a famous Japanese actor, was terrific there." Which production is your favorite? "I have a special place in my heart for the first production with Zero Mostel. Mostel did an excellent job. He played Tevye in the most yiddish way. But the others also did a good job. I liked Haim Topol. His performance gave Tevye an Israeli touch. Actually, I like the current production a lot." How is it that a play with such a Jewish story has succeeded all over the world? "The story is a Jewish story. The characters are Jewish, but the conflicts presented in the play could happened anywhere. In Ireland or in Italy. In Japan, they told me that the musical is very Japanese. The conflict between generations is after all universal. The frictions between religion and secularism are universal." Stein is not bothered by the fact that the lead actors of the latest Broadway production are a homosexual and a lesbian. "Harvey Fierstein, who never sang on Broadway, did an excellent job as Tevye. He asked to audition for the part," he says, "Rosie O'Donnell is of Irish descent, but when I heard her acting and singing in the role of Golda, it reminded me of my mother, a very strong woman." You are 96. How is it that you look so good and are so lucid? "Apparently the maths is wrong. A few years ago I had bypass surgery. I heard the doctor talking to the staff around him and he told them: 'This man's body is 30 years younger than his biological age.' How do I explain it? I don't know. I exercise. I don't eat heavy food with fat. I just don't like it. And apart from that, I have a wife, Elisa, who I have been married to for almost 40 years [his second marriage - H.H.] and she's the best thing that ever happened to me." Bookmark to del.icio.us   A top priority Barack Obama: We will keep Israel's security a priority. Tale of a key Cartoon film on Nakba describes Jews as 'enemies of homeland'.

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