Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a Fiddler on the Roof.......

For the Jewish people in the small Russian Village of Anatevka, life is nothing if not precarious. It is 1905 and the eve of the Russian revolution. "God keep the Tsar.....far away from us" says the Rabbi. However, it is not just the changes threatening to sweep through Tsarist Russia that the villagers have to face, but the much harder recognition that change is coming to their own tiny community through the hopes and expectations of its younger generation.

These changes will come particularly hard to Tevye, a hardworking man with five daughters and a twenty-five year marriage. For him, tradition is closely bound with his sense of identity: "Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do". Tradition dictates that the papa has the final word, the mama will raise the family and run the home, and that the sons and daughters will obey their parents in all things - especially in marriage. In Anatevka matches are not made in heaven but, for a smal fee, by Yente the town's matchmaker.

It is this last tradition that is to be the first to fall to the new spirit on self-determination. Whilst Tevye shares his daughters' wish for a fine match, he does not share their notion of what a fine match is. Tevye hopes they marry, if not a wealthy man, at least one of comfortable means, who is capableof providing for them so that they will never have to know the meaning of hunger. Te girls, however, dream of a omantic love and a handsome young husband, making Yente's first "matchless match" - a fat butcher with a bloodied apron - seem all the more abhorrent!

As each of the three eldest daughters follows the dictates of her heart and not those of her culture, Tevye is forced to reconcile his love for his family and his wish for their happiness with his own dependence on the traditions of his faith.........