Fiddler on the Roof

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Jun 28, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

The rabbi was able to fit all of his worldly possessions inside a briefcase.

Lorna Culmone Bourgeois should be impressed. Or so it would seem. Instead, her shoulders raise, then drop to release a heavy sigh.

No need to say anything. The rabbi will be leaving Anatevka in a few seconds. Along with a second Anatevkan, this one carrying a medium-sized suitcase, something that may have been stylish in, oh, the 1970s.

Bourgeois holds her tongue, shakes her head.

It’s OK. Really, it is. For now.

The goal is to make sure everyone falls into the procession, then disperses into their different directions. Russia doesn’t want them, so they head for Poland, America and the land that eventually will become the sovereign state of Israel.

And everything is happening on schedule until a third Anatevkan shows up with a suitcase. OMG. That’s text talk, something that didn’t exist in 1905. This suitcase wouldn’t have been around, either.

It’s the biggest and ugliest of them all, and Bourgeois can’t help asking the question on everyone’s mind: “Where did he get that?”

Still, she dares not interrupt the procession, choosing, instead, to bury her face in her hands.

These are supposed to be poor, Jewish people in exile in the earliest years of the 20th century. But the Pasqua Theatre’s prop room obviously is stocked only with luggage from the mid-to-late part of the century.

And hideous luggage at that.

“They just wouldn’t have been carrying anything like this,” Bourgeois said. “They may have brought trunks — big trunks that they wouldn’t have been able to carry like a suitcase. But more than likely, they would have carried bundles. I’ll make sure we fix up some bundles for everyone.”

She’s standing now, walking among cast members. These are the people who will make up Anatevka’s fictional Jewish population when Ascension Community Theatre stages Fiddler on the Roof, which opens Thursday, July 9.