“Am I still capable of this?”
Jason Alexander has been asking himself this very question while preparing to star in “Fiddler on the Roof” at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts — his first stage musical role in decades.
“I’m 65 years old, playing a character that, if you crunch the math, should be about 40,” he told The Times of taking on Tevye, the show’s devout dairyman. “It’s exponentially harder for me now. I can’t dance the way I used to and my best scampering days may be behind me. I’ve had to assess whether or not I could realistically convey this character’s energy and vitality, and really do the role justice.”
Producers are counting on him to do so, and are pulling out all the stops in the meantime. Running through Dec. 1, the ambitious southeast Los Angeles County production features a rich three-dimensional set, a 34-actor cast performing re-creations of Jerome Robbins’ 1964 choreography and a 19-piece orchestra playing Don Walker’s original orchestrations. Already, it’s all paid off: Eleven days before the first performance, the show broke even, setting records for the theater’s season subscriptions and single-ticket sales — a rare return in today’s regional theater landscape.
La Mirada Theatre’s “Fiddler” is already in the black partly, of course, because of Alexander’s star power. Playing the protagonist of the beloved musical has been a lifelong dream for the actor, who’s spent his post-”Seinfeld” days directing and performing in stage shows. The closest he’d previously gotten to doing so were the brief talks to replace Danny Burstein in the fifth Broadway revival of the Joseph Stein/Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick musical, based on Sholem Aleichem stories about a Jewish milkman’s family, faith and community.
“It’s like it was written for him, and he’s bringing all kinds of colors that I don’t think any other Tevye has ever brought to the piece,” said director Lonny Price of Alexander. The two first met as part of the original Broadway cast of “Merrily We Roll Along” in 1981. “People will expect him to be funny in this, which he is, and he’s always been a great singer and dancer. But I think the thing people will take away from this is his range, and his real skill as a dramatic actor. In this role, he’s as equally moving as he is funny.”
This “Fiddler” staging is a return to its original form at Alexander’s request, albeit a costly one. “I love the piece so much, and I wanted the full flavor bouquet of what was intended, and I was concerned that anybody who said they wanted to do it was going to do it on the cheap,” he said.
For example, “It’s so hard these days with the economics of theater to get a large company of actors onstage, but I knew that if you tried to do this with less than, say, 30 people, you can’t fill out the stage enough to present a community. But our producers are wonderful, they’ve said yes to everything we’ve asked for.”
While the production is one of the most expensive shows ever staged at La Mirada Theatre, it is also the fastest in the theater’s history to break even and begin turning a profit. It boosted season subscriptions 22% to a new high, and set a new record for a single day’s ticket sales. Altogether, an estimated 29,000 people will attend the production, with 21% of ticket buyers being first-time patrons.
But the production — and its profits — are possible only because of the theater’s unique business model: La Mirada Theatre is the rare regional theater that’s municipally owned and operated, with the city of La Mirada commissioning the initial transformation of an obsolete movie house and continuing to pay its ongoing production costs, thanks to taxes, ticket sales and additional revenue streams like venue rentals.
“In addition to paying for the venue itself and the entire staff, the city also provides funding for everything in the theater — the actors, the royalties, the musicians in the pit, the props they’re carrying, the microphones on their heads, down to the flowers in the lobby and the ticket stock you’re holding,” explained producing artistic director BT McNicholl.
“Of course, we do have people who donate, but that’s not the bulk of the support,” he continued. With no board of directors to please or annual donor gala to host, it allows you to really focus on the patrons, McNicholl said. “Ultimately, this is the city saying the arts is a public service, and it’s enriching not just the city of La Mirada and its residents but all those in the surrounding Southern California cities that we’re serving as well.”
McCoy Rigby Entertainment — which repeatedly brought Cathy Rigby and “Peter Pan” to Broadway and on the road, and is transferring a “Mystic Pizza” musical to New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse next year — has been hired to stage La Mirada Theatre’s seasons for 31 years and counting. “There’s no having to raise 50% or 60% of our nut through donations and corporate sponsorships,” said executive producer Tom McCoy, “which, in the world of regional theater, is quite remarkable.”
“It’s such a gift to those of us who love the theater — my God, it’s the difference between life and death,” said Alexander of the theater’s operations. His own former theater company, Reprise, operated on a subscriber model, and the base of financial support to sustain it dried up, he said. But at La Mirada Theatre, the community is willing to sign the deficit check.
“They’re saying, ‘We don’t expect you to end the season in profit, just serve the community and make sure they feel like their tax dollars have gone to something worthwhile,’” Alexander said. “I wish that communities everywhere had the benefit of this kind of a funding model. I’m sure it would pay benefits back to the community in triplicate, especially in the areas around the country that are generally underserved in the arts.”
This star-led “Fiddler” came to be because Alexander mentioned his interest in Tevye in a 2022 interview — an article McNicholl shared with producers McCoy and Rigby, the latter of whom worked with him in a 2008 production of “Li’l Abner.” To be turning a profit well before opening night “is encouraging,” said Price, “especially when you ask for something you need, you know that you’re not going to be hurting the theater to get it for you in order to put on the show you want their audiences to see.”
McCoy told The Times that he’s requested production rights to “Fiddler” for a possible sixth Broadway revival. But that transfer is not necessarily Alexander’s goal. In fact, he hopes his turn as Tevye is a reminder to other actors to prioritize productions beyond the Great White Way, or even the immediate city of L.A.
“I will tell you: My manager was not excited about the idea of me doing this role in La Mirada,” he said. “She went, ‘Why are you doing this in La Mirada?’ And I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I do it in La Mirada?’
“To be on Broadway and have a Broadway audience, that’s very exciting — as far as the commercial theater in America goes, that’s our heaven, that’s mecca,” he continued. “But there are audiences that can never get to New York; there are audiences that can’t get to Los Angeles. The idea that they are any less deserving than any other audience? An audience is an audience, and if there’s an audience who wants to see it, and there’s a theater that will invest in it and do it well, it’s worth doing.”
