Oh, To Be a Rich Man

Eddie Mekka breaks with ‘Tradition’ to play Tevye in ‘Fiddler’ at Bucks County Playhouse.

By: Daniel Shearer

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Staff photo by Frank Wojciechowski

Eddie Mekka, plays in The Fiddler, at the Bucks County Playhouse.


   To those who know him as Carmine Ragusa, the lovable Italian-American tough guy, "The Big Ragoo," from the sitcom Laverne & Shirley, Eddie Mekka may seem an unusual choice for the lead role in Fiddler on the Roof.
   Bucks County Playhouse owner Ralph Miller saw the potential in the early ’90s, when the actor visited New Hope, Pa., to see a show at the theater. Mr. Mekka had previously portrayed Groucho Marx, from ages 15 to 87, in An Evening with Groucho, so the idea of playing Tevye, an aging dairyman struggling to hold together his Russian family, seemed like a good fit when Mr. Miller and former artistic director Hubert Fryman suggested the role.
   "I said, ‘Let me think about it,’ and I started listening to Jackie Mason," Mr. Mekka says. "I watched Topol do it. I said, ‘He’s only 31. I’m older than him, I think I can do this. Once we started rehearsing, I grew into it."
   That was 1993. Since then, Mr. Mekka has performed the role in three Playhouse stagings, twice in 1996, and again in 1999. He has since been cast as Tevye in several dozen East Coast Fiddler productions as well.
   "Ralph Miller took a chance and I’ll be forever grateful to him," says Mr. Mekka, seated in an office at the playhouse. "Hubert Fryman had seen me do Groucho. He was the first director who would say, ‘Let’s use Eddie Mekka,’ because I don’t look like Tevye. When I put the make-up on and I act, then I’m Tevye.
   "The first couple of scenes, (Fryman) would stand in the lobby, stopping people from leaving, because they didn’t realize that was me with the beard. I slept with tapes of Jackie Mason. It was like a fighter getting in shape. I do a lousy Jackie Mason, but I do a good Jew, respectfully, of course."
   Mr. Mekka is reprising the role at the Playhouse through June 15, this time directed by Playhouse veteran Michael Licata, a New York native who recently moved to Bensalem, Pa.
   "Fiddler is beautifully written and beautifully structured, but it’s very dependent on your leading actor," says Mr. Licata, who has directed several Playhouse productions since 1997, including Jekyll & Hyde, The Music Man and Annie Get Your Gun last season. "Can’t do the show without an excellent Tevye. I think we’re lucky to have one of the best around.
   "It was initially put together by one of the best director-choreographers in the industry, Jerome Robbins, and then they had Zero Mostel play Tevye. All the elements come together to make this beautiful show, and in the ’60s, it was the show."
   Based on Sholom Aleichem’s short story "Tevye and his Daughters," Fiddler is set in Anatevka, a fictional Jewish village in pre-Revolutionary Russia. The plot revolves around Tevye, a troubled father attempting to maintain his family’s Jewish traditions. The musical takes its title from a line in which Tevye suggests that without tradition life would be shaky, like a fiddler on a roof, trying to play without falling on his face.
   "He’s got five daughters, and they’re slowly breaking out of the shell," Mr. Mekka says. "One’s marrying without a matchmaker. Nowadays, what’s a matchmaker? But then they marry outside of the religion, even worse. So he can bend, but a tree that bends too much is going to break, and he can’t really accept it. They tear him apart, but he still has a sense of humor."
   Though it may be far removed, Mr. Mekka sees parallels between Fiddler and Laverne & Shirley.
   "First you make them like you, then they can cry with you once you’re hurting," he says. "On ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ we had a lot of stuff going on. Usually, at the end of the show, after we made everybody laugh, it was like ‘Hey Shirl, you know you’re my best friend.’ And they played the theme song half tempo.
   "So, from the Garry Marshall school of make ’em laugh, then make ’em cry, which is Dick Van Dyke, too, Tevye is the same way. He makes you laugh, then toward the end, when his daughters are ripping him apart, he’s still able to laugh, but when he cries you feel it with him."
   Years before breaking into television, Mr. Mekka performed his first Fiddler as a high school student growing up near Worcester, Mass.
   "I was a senior," he says, "and my girlfriend was in ‘Fiddler’ and she asked me to do it. I was a gymnast, a New England champion. I could do back handsprings. She said, ‘Why don’t you play one of the Russians,’ so I did the bottle dance and stuff. And, three, four years ago, I went back and did ‘Fiddler’ again, but I played Tevye this time, so it was like rags to riches."
   Mr. Mekka attended Boston Conservatory of Music as a voice major but left less than a year later to work the New England dinner-theater circuit, which at the time offered good-paying union jobs. Urged by friends, he moved to New York City in 1973 and made his Broadway debut the following year in the Tom Stoppard play Jumpers. He followed it with the lead role in The Lieutenant, a musical that received best actor nominations for Tony and Drama Desk awards despite its short run.
   Riding high on Broadway success, Mr. Mekka moved to Los Angeles in 1975. Three days later, he landed a role in the fledgling sitcom Laverne & Shirley, thanks to a meeting with a well-connected agent. He reported for a cold reading at 7 a.m. the next day, followed by a screen test at 9 that night.
   At the time, ABC president Fred Silverman and Happy Days creator Garry Marshall were refining an idea for a spin-off show, based on two characters played by Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, who made a brief appearance on the show as ditzy dates.
   "Garry Marshall said to the audience of ‘Happy Days,’ he said, ‘Listen. Remember Laverne and Shirley? We’re gonna do a 10-minute scene with another character called Carmine,’" says Mr. Mekka. "We did the scene, they applauded, and they said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ No test, no pilot, nothing. They respected Fred Silverman and Garry Marshall, like they did Aaron Spelling (executive producer for ‘The Love Boat,’ ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and eventually ‘Beverly Hills 90210.’)
   "It wasn’t 50 auditions. You didn’t have to change your hair. Nowadays, because I still go out for television stuff, it’s like 20 calls. You go in, eight million people with their hands on the paintbrush, how can you even paint a picture anymore? There’s so many variables."
   Mr. Mecca maintained an active theater career during Laverne & Shirley’s run, 1976 to 1983, and since then has divided his time between television, legitimate theater and his nightclub act, The Eddie Mekka Show, also performing in the films Beaches and A League of Their Own.
   Last year, he went on the road as Vince Fontaine in a national tour of Grease, and recently finished back-to-back stagings of Art with Richard Kline, and the American premiere of Run for Your Wife, both in Los Angeles. Mr. Mekka now lives in Las Vegas with his wife and 8-year-old daughter.
   "I’m a song-and-dance man," Mr. Mekka says. "Nobody expects to go to L.A. and in three days land a hit series. Who thinks about that? I’d like to think that I can go back on television because I know it like the back of my hand. It’s just the secretaries who are now casting people, it’s hard to get through them. ‘Oh, Eddie Mekka? That’s Carmine. I saw him on ‘Laverne & Shirley’ this morning.’
   "Those same people would never cast me as Tevye in ‘Fiddler.’ But you see me with the beard and the Jewish accent, doing the whole thing, you’re going, ‘Where’s Eddie Mekka?’ I even make a speech at the end so they’ll know it’s me, which to me is the best thing I can do. I can do this role ’til the day I die, as long as I can hit those high notes."
Fiddler on the Roof plays at Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, Pa., through June 15. Performances: Wed.-Thurs. 2, 8 p.m.; Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 4, 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20-$24. For information, call (215) 862-2041. On the Web: www.buckscountyplayhouse.com