Around Broadway

The beloved 1964 musical "Fiddler on the Roof," with its book by Joseph Stein and score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, is back on Broadway this season. Based on writer Sholem Aleichem's Yiddish tales of Tevye the milkman, this new production of "Fiddler" is the show's fifth return to the Great White Way. The role of Tevye was originated by Zero Mostel, played on stage and film by Chaim Topol, and on Broadway by Herschel Bernardi, Theodore Bikel, Leonard Nimoy and Harvey Fierstein, among others. In this production, five-time Tony Award nominee Danny Burstein has the role, and the director is Bartlett Sher, acclaimed for his Rodgers and Hammerstein revivals on Broadway. But do we really need yet another "Fiddler on the Roof?" New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explains why we just might. "Fiddler on the Roof" runs through July 3 at the Broadway Theatre.