Fiddler On The Roof, Playhouse, Edinburgh

Star rating: **** There's a strangely subdued air prior to this touring revival of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's 1964 musical set among the Jewish community in early twentieth-century Russia. It's as if the lights have been lowered in mourning for the serious musical. Because, in this yarn about milkman Tevye and his daughters, Joseph Stein's book is integral to the action in a way at which makers of cheaply-strung-together modern shows would be agape.