A Tony Award-nominated actor from HBO’s “The Gilded Age” will play the lead role in Signature Theatre’s rendition of “Fiddler on the Roof” this fall.
The Shirlington theater has cast Douglas Sills as Tevye, a Jewish peasant and the musical’s narrator who endures rising antisemitism alongside his family and neighbors in Czarist Russia. The actor is known for his role as chef Monsieur Baudin on “The Gilded Age.”
Sills joined the HBO show’s cast in 2022 and has starred in over two dozen regional and Broadway shows since the late 1980s. In 1998, he received a Tony Award nomination for his leading Broadway performance in “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“Fiddler on the Roof” premieres Tuesday, Nov. 4 and is set to run through Jan. 25 in Signature’s MAX Theatre (4200 Campbell Avenue). Tickets start at $47 and can be purchased on the theater’s website.
Signature announced the show’s casting and artistic direction in a release yesterday (Monday). Sills is joined by director Joe Calarco, with choreography by Sarah Parker and music direction by Jon Kalbfleisch.
The iconic musical is based on a set of stories written by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, who wrote about his upbringing and Jewish life in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The musical got its start on Broadway in 1964 and was later adapted into a 1971 film.
“At its heart, Fiddler on the Roof is about family, faith, and tradition,” Calarco said. “It explores how communities react to change, how younger generations can alter, and sometimes break, the hearts of their parents, and how the Jewish people will always find joy and resilience even in moments of tremendous suffering.”
Also at Signature Theatre this fall, the D.C. premiere run of “Strategic Love Play” lasts until Nov. 9. In December, the theater will host the American premiere of “In Clay,” a musical based on the life of a twentieth century artist Marie-Berthe Cazin.
Photo 1 via Douglas Sills
