Broadway musical theatre writer who wrote the libretto for Fiddler on the Roof and the screenplay for the 1971 film
Joseph Stein, who has died aged 98, was the last of the great Broadway musical theatre writers coming out of New York revue and television comedy after the second world war. Most famously, he wrote the book, or libretto, for Fiddler on the Roof (1964) and Zorba (1968). "There are no limitations to the subject for a musical," Stein once said, "just as there are no limitations to the subject for a play or a novel. The only limitation that I can see is that it has to have an honesty about the relationship of people to each other."
He cast his net wide, shaping not only the Ukrainian shtetl stories of Sholom Aleichem into the tale of Tevye the milkman and his five daughters in Fiddler on the Roof, but also drawing, perhaps surprisingly,...
Joseph Stein, who has died aged 98, was the last of the great Broadway musical theatre writers coming out of New York revue and television comedy after the second world war. Most famously, he wrote the book, or libretto, for Fiddler on the Roof (1964) and Zorba (1968). "There are no limitations to the subject for a musical," Stein once said, "just as there are no limitations to the subject for a play or a novel. The only limitation that I can see is that it has to have an honesty about the relationship of people to each other."
He cast his net wide, shaping not only the Ukrainian shtetl stories of Sholom Aleichem into the tale of Tevye the milkman and his five daughters in Fiddler on the Roof, but also drawing, perhaps surprisingly,...
- 10/26/2010
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
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