Any good production of Fiddler needs a strong center, and Stephen Skybell delivers, even as he is also the most emotionally muted, physically small Tevye I've ever seen: there's not a trace of Zero Mostel's bluster or swagger to be found here. Gone too are the broad gestures, stagey asides, bits of clowning, bellowed dialogue. The same applies to all the musical's most comic characters: Jennifer Babiak's Golde is a levelheaded, calm and rather graceful balabusta who utterly lacks the harried exasperation and exceedingly short temper her character almost always seems to invite. The village rabbi is still a doddering, senile old man, but Adam B. Shapiro infuses him with enough grounded dignity and world-weariness that he is no longer a walking punchline. And as the always wonderful Jackie Hoffman has interpreted her, Yente is still a gossipy motormouth with a severely limited grasp of social boundaries, but she's also lonely, vulnerable, and concerned for her own livelihood in the face of political and cultural change.
These flesh-and-blood depictions result in a more moving (if also more painful) finale, in which Anatevka's residents are driven from what has been their home for generations on three days' notice. No wonder, then, that while the rabbi and Yente are still respectively as foggy and logorrheic as they always have been, there's nevertheless nothing cute or diverting about them in their final scenes; Hoffman, in particular, delivers Yente's last lines in a voice gritty with exhaustion, worry, and sorrow.
