Jerry Zaks, the Broadway director tells a story of when he was a young actor replacing Austin Pendleton as the character Mostel. He had to ask for the hand of one of Tevye’s daughters and was consistently rejected and humiliated by Tevye. Tevye was still being played by the master actor-performer-tragedian-clown Zero Mostel. The first night Zaks took over the role, in the scene where the timid Mostel finally stands up to Tevye and tells him off, right before Zaks began to speak he heard Mostel growl under his breath. “Give it to me! Give it to me!” After the performance, Zaks stormed off to the stage manager and complained that Mostel was giving him acting notes during the performance. The hapless stage manager turned to him and said, “Well, he’s Zero Mostel, there is not a helluva lot I can do.”
The next night, as Zaks got ready to deliver the same passionate monologue, Mostel growled even more insistently, “Give it to me, give it to me!!” Once again Zaks complained to the stage manager to no avail.
The third night, Zaks was in an absolute rage as he walked onto the stage for the confrontation scene. Mostel growled, almost loudly enough for the audience to hear “Give it to me, give it to me!!!” at which point Zaks roared his declaration of independence from Tevye and suddenly the house came down in screams, laughs, and applause.
Mostel gave Zaks a look as if to say, “Now, schmuck, you did it right,” and Zaks learned in an incomparable lesson for achieving the correct intensity for this comedy. Mostel intuited that Zaks wouldn’t play the stakes high enough for the scene to work as well as it could. “Fiddler on the roof” takes place in the Jewish village it was under siege by anti-semites. Mostel’s love for his daughter blooms in this world where violence and death are everyday possibilities.
[jwplayer mediaid=”26089″]