#chaimtopol

I vomited in a bin on the way to my first day of rehearsals for Fiddler. It was my first ever professional gig and I was convinced I would arrive, only to find there had been some horrible mistake and my headshot had been switched at the audition or some such and they’d cast the wrong girl. 

But in I went, and sure enough they were expecting me. And there he was, Chaim Topol, this man I had watched and studied on my television my entire childhood, singing ‘If I Were A Rich Man’ just a few feet away from from me in a pair of crocs and baggy jeans. The room was electric. We all felt it. The man is a master. His voice was so resonant. His joy, contagious. His timing, impeccable. And when he was done, we erupted into emotional applause and I took myself off to the bathroom to nervous vomit again before for our first call. 

At first Chaim and I didn’t speak much outside of our scene rehearsals together.  But one day, during a lunch break, he asked me for help sending an SMS on his  new mobile phone. The next day, as he was reading his paper, he asked me if I’d ever played Sudoku. I hadn’t. So he told me to pull up a chair and he taught me the rules and walked me through my first puzzle. It soon became a lunchtime tradition of ours that we would do the daily sudoku together. He didn’t like it, though, when I developed a habit of writing tiny option numbers in all the boxes as we worked. He’d say “Do it in your head! It’s too messy!”. So it wasn’t long before I was buying a daily newspaper for myself at Chaim’s request.

Rehearsals: Shaun Rennie as Fyedka (left) and me (right)

Soon rehearsals turned into previews turned into shows, and I was finally able to witness in real time the incredible power Topol held over an audience. The way two thousand people would burst into simultaneous laughter or tears with just a flicker of his eye or a slight glance up to his “God light” or a shrug of his shoulders was nothing short of magical. 

He had it. That thing. That thing people talk about stars having that’s impossible to articulate and has to be experienced. He seemed to have a finger and thumb on that invisible thread that links all human beings to each other and he knew exactly when to tug at it to make you feel ... well, whatever he wanted you to. 

Soon I started getting to know Topol a little better. Our show tracks were such that we often found ourselves at the side of the stage at the same times and so we started these little catch up traditions. Chat number 1 would fall during Act 1 Scene 2. My sisters and I would be stuck behind the house set onstage during a long old scene and Chaim would be resting on his milk cart in the wings, Stage Right. And every night there would be a mouthed or mimed exchange between us all which grew funnier and more ridiculous as the run went on. 

My sisters Louise Kelly as Tzeitel and Octavia Barron Martin as Hodel

Chat number 2 fell before the Sabbath scene, when both Chaim and I would have a 5 minute break to chat in the wings, Stage Left. These little pit stops became rituals over time. In fact, if I didn’t show up, he would jokingly berate me for “throwing his show off”. (Anyone who has ever done a long season know these little traditions take hold for no logical reason at all and continue for years as superstitions. And we take them very, very seriously.) 

But I was happy to be a part of his nightly routine, because I was enjoying the chance to get to know him. He would tell me about his family. He’d ask about mine. We’d talk about the original book of Tevye the Milkman and delve into the characters and differences between the book and play and I’d pick his brains on past casts and memories. We’d discuss current politics and he’d update me on his grandkids and share anecdotes about famous people he’d met along the way. He’d also tell me he didn’t think much of my boyfriend at the time and demand to know who that boy was he caught me sharing a pint with at the bar last night after the show. (It was a kind of running joke of his to bring the Papa/Chava dynamic into the real world.) And I’d remind him I already had a real life Papa (Papa number 1, to Chaim) and the boy he saw me with last night was my big brother so the next time he wants to burst in to a pub yelling “Hah! Caught you! Step away from her!” and make a spectacle of himself he should take a beat, etc, etc. 

A few months into the tour, I was offered a place at a big drama school and I had to decide whether to take my place and leave the tour, or turn it down and stay. One night in our wing chat, I asked Chaim what he thought I should do. He thought for a moment and replied, “You should go where you want to end up.” It felt like a proverb somehow. Brilliant. He continued “Why would you go to drama school?” I replied. “To get an agent and a job and a part in a show...” He smiled. (I already had those things. Well played. But I wasn’t finished.) “…AND to study my craft. To learn. Don’t I need to learn more?” I asked him. “Of course. Every day!” he replied. 

“But look there...” He pointed to a tiny gap in the wing where you could just make out the audience sitting in the dark. “You see that? Your audience? There’s your education. Learn from them.” 

So, eventually, I decided to stay on the tour, but also “learn everyday” just like Chaim said. The audience was one thing, but I realized there was so much more to be learned from, not just Topol, but the entire cast (full of some of Australia’s finest actors) around me. I would watch other people’s scenes in the wings and ask other actors to do scene studies with me in our spare time and rope musicians in to accompanying me on breaks so I could work on my voice. I also started trying to read a play a day and expand my knowledge of texts and I would read books and watch videos on different dramatists and directors (Mamet, Stella Adler, Stanislavski, etc). I almost conducted a mini bachelor degree of my own while I toured. I look back now and realize how incredibly cool and inspiring and beautiful that whole “growing up” period of my life was. College is great and all but have you ever spent your 19th birthday at a drag show with a village of bearded men singing Kylie Minogue songs like they were straight out of Les Mis? 

Chaim Topol as Tevye (1971 film)

Chaim helped where he could too (other than being in and of himself, an acting masterclass). He introduced me to Brecht, the acting method he first learned during his time in the Israeli Army and let me pick his brains about his own process. For example, there is a scene in the play where he gets progressively drunker and I remember asking him what it was he was doing or thinking about that made it so believable when he played drunk. He told me “The trick is, I’m not playing drunk at all. I am drunk, playing sober.”

He was constantly, endlessly workshopping our scenes together too, looking for new angles to see things from. (This relentless curiosity I’m sure was the reason he was able to grow old with Tevye without ever growing tired.) He figured out quickly how to work with me too. Instead of asking cerebral questions about my motivation or my actions or objectives in the scene, he would simply ask me how it felt to be in it. He’d say “When you ask for my blessing and I say “No, Chava! No!” and I scream at you… how does that word “No” arrive to you? What does it sound like? Broken glass? A screech? And what does it feel like? A hit? A stab? And if so… with what? A pin? A fork? A dagger? A sword? And where is it stabbing you? The stomach? The neck?” He demanded specificity. Quick answers. Gut instinct. If I paused trying to come up with the right or clever answer he would say “No! You’re thinking! Don’t think!”. He helped get me out of my head, listen, watch, then shoot from the hip; something I’ll probably spend the rest of my life desparately trying to do. 

Me (left) and Chaim Topol (right)

But perhaps one of my favourite Chaim moments happened one night during one of our scenes together in Act 2 (photographed above). In this scene, Chava tells her Papa she has fallen in love with a non-Jewish man. He replies with the famous line “A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?” 

Most nights, this line would get a laugh from the audience. (Partly because the line is amusing and partly because at this point in the show people are just desperate for some levity.) But Topol hated it when the audience laughed. He felt it destroyed the rhythm of our scene and took away from the heaviness of what was going on for our characters. So one night when he was complaining about it to me, I said to him “So make them stop!”.  Quick as a whip he replied, “How much?”. I panicked. “Ten bucks.” (I mean, the man owned entire villages in Israel, so I appreciate the stakes were low for him, but equally, I didn’t fancy my chances.) We shook on it. 

The next night, I fed him the cue for his bird line and held my breath. He said the words back to me and from where I was standing (literally 2 centimeters from his nose), delivered them exactly the same as he had every single night for months. But this time, when he finished, I swear you could hear a damn pin drop. The silence was deafening. I couldn’t believe it. 

After the show, $10 note in hand, I found him and demanded answers. “How did you do that?” He just shrugged “I just… delivered it badly.” To this day I don’t know what that means. But this was the beginning of many more bets we would share. I lost a lot of money to that millionaire. Soon he was setting me bets some of my scenes too. And I’m proud to say, slowly but surely, I got me a couple tenners back. 

Some time just before the end of the tour, I was sat at the piano in a warm up room singing something or other. (It was probably “Butterflies” from Alicia Keys Songs in A Minor). I wasn’t writing songs yet really. I didn’t even like the sound of my singing voice at this time because it wasn’t a typically “music theatre” voice and I had been assured I was cast for my acting / type and not my singing ability. But even so, singing at the piano felt like home, so whenever we had a bit of down time I’d steal away to somewhere no one could hear me and busk out a few tunes for my soul. But on this particular day as I was singing, I finished the song and looked up to see Chaim had been sitting on a chair at the back of the room the whole time, listening. I was mortified. But he got up all serious and pointed at me and said… “This thing you are doing? You should keep doing it. Do more of that.” And then left me to it. 

I count this as 1 of 3 incredibly important moments in my life that knocked on the door of a realization I would eventually come to ...that, for better or worse, I needed to make music. That music was a way of telling stories I needed to be a part of. 

Chaim Topol and I, Covent Garden - a chance meeting on the street.

We continued to stay in touch long after the tour and in one of our last phone call conversations, I asked him if it was difficult for him to watch anyone else play Tevye. He told me it wasn’t, that in fact he loved it and had seen it and enjoyed it all over the world in every language. He insisted Tevye was just a great part in an incredible play and the truth is anyone who plays him will do it well if they just speak the lines and get out of the way, etc, etc. He described himself as “lucky”. Respectfully, I beg to differ.

I will close now, because I only meant to write a couple of paragraphs and this has turned into something of a novel. 

But Chaim, if you are looking down, I hope you have a seat by the Eastern wall. And thank you for the memories and a masterclass of a lifetime.