Playhouse 2000 opens ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Friday at the Cailloux

Playhouse 2000 launches its production of “Fiddler on the Roof” Friday night at the Cailloux Theater, bringing the Tony Award-winning Broadway classic to Kerrville for an eight-show run through Aug. 9.

The show stars married couple Jeffrey Brown and Jane L. Sansom-Brown as Tevye and Golde, leading a cast of 35 local volunteer singers and dancers under director Heather Cunningham, music director Alexis Korbe, choreographer Ambra Harrah and stage manager Kerri Sparkman. Brown is also Playhouse 2000’s executive director, a post he’s held for 15 years.

Set in the village of Anatevka in Czarist Russia, “Fiddler on the Roof” follows Tevye, a poor Jewish milkman, as he tries to hold on to his family’s traditions while his daughters chart their own paths and the world around them shifts. The 1964 original ran more than 3,000 performances, won nine Tony Awards and has been revived on Broadway five times. It gave the American songbook staples including “Tradition,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset” and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.”

Brown said the show’s staying power comes from the age its music first found its audience.

“We all know that the music that we attach ourselves to is what we were listening to when we were 17 years old,” Brown said. “So 1964 — that audience is coming of age right now, and they and their kids and their parents all fell in love with this show. Tevye is an absolutely iconic character, loved across the world, and the show has so much to say to so many people.”

He said he relates to the character’s struggles more than he expected.

“Tevye has a tough, tough time over the course of this show,” Brown said. “He’s got to live through children telling him that his way of life is outdated, and then he gets uprooted from his home and has to go take his life someplace else. There’s a lot of places to relate to for me.”

Brown and Sansom-Brown, married 35 years, have performed opposite each other for decades in shows including “She Loves Me,” “A Little Night Music” and “Side by Side by Sondheim” at theaters in Texas and Tennessee.

“Jane holds her own, no doubt,” Brown said of his wife’s turn as Golde. “She’s lived with me for 40 years — we’ve been married for 35. I met my wife on stage. We appeared together before we were dating, and we got married in between performances of ‘The Robber Bridegroom.'”

Brown said he hasn’t been on a Kerrville stage often since moving back to Texas about 15 years ago — this is roughly his fourth local role in that stretch — so some longtime friends might not recognize him under Tevye’s beard.

“Twice in the last two weeks, people that I know fairly well didn’t recognize me in a restaurant,” he said. “Which was a lot of fun.”

As for whether this run is a swan song: “Will this be the last time I’m on stage? Never. Never say never.”

Playhouse 2000 marketing director Amy Goodyear said the timing of the show — arriving as Kerr County continues recovering from this month’s flooding and last year’s catastrophic July 4 flood — wasn’t planned, but it fits.

“Unbeknownst to us, serendipitously or not, this is the best show we could be doing right now — the title our community needs to come and see,” Goodyear said. “It’s about a community facing great change and great challenges and how they bond together and keep their faith and keep their traditions and the love they have for each other. We can’t be defeated by this latest setback. It happened. We’re going to overcome it. It’s going to be difficult, but we can.”

Goodyear also pointed out that the show mirrors the community putting it on.

“This is very much a family-friendly show — there are families in the show, which is a lot of fun. We have a lot of parents performing with their kids, husband-and-wife teams,” she said. “Not only is it a story about community, this is very much a micro of our community on stage together.”

Show details

“Fiddler on the Roof” runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. through Aug. 9, with 2:30 p.m. Sunday matinees on Aug. 2 and 9. The Cailloux lobby opens one hour before curtain, with concessions and beverages available from Omakase Hospitality.

Tickets run $24 to $28 for adults; all children and students are $15 regardless of seating. Tickets can be purchased at the Cailloux box office, by phone at (830) 896-9393, or online at CaillouxPerformingArts.com, where a $2.50-per-ticket convenience fee applies. Tickets are also available at the door.

Goodyear urged ticket buyers to be careful of resale sites impersonating the venue.

“Specifically look for CaillouxPerformingArts.com,” she said. “More generally, just look for the direct site to the space, not somebody who’s selling other shows too. Dust off those critical thinking skills.”

Cast

Tevye – Jeffrey Brown; Golde – Jane Sansom Brown; Tzeitel – River Wellborn; Motel – Robert Gonzales; Hodel – LilyAnn Cox; Perchik – Brad Gilbert; Chava – Sophia Ratliff; Sprintze – Kimmy Alvarado; Bielke – Hannah Young; Grandma Tzeitel – Penni Cox Yente – Rebekah Remlinger; Fruma Sarah – Liz Sosa; Lazar Wolf – Judd Vermillion; Rabbi – Kevin Nixon; Avram – Fred Henneke; Mordcha – Rob Ward; Fiddler – Katie Bishop

Bottle dancers/ensemble: GlennAlise Saunier, Ali Webb, Annabelle Burzynski, Nora Hughes

Ensemble: Anthony Alvarado, Donald Kearney, Mitchell Grafton, Kairi Pyle, Asher Kenney, Kendal (Jade) Dye, Wendy Mieske, Jim Reynolds, Rachel Young, Anna Cook