Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

Tevier, surely the fastest milkman in the east.

Or if not the fastest, surely the best known and most beloved.

It's just over 50 years since Fiddler on the roof made its Broadway debut with the irrepressible

Zero Mostel in the lead, bringing to life Jerry Box music and Jerome Robbins' choreography.

It's a musical that's been adored throughout that time. It's one of the most

performed pieces in American high schools, and the movie starring Topol was a huge hit. But it's

also been controversial, accused of sugar-coating the violent history of pogroms in Eastern Europe,

and prittifying life in the Stettel. To discuss the enduring appeal of the

tradition-minded dairyman and his more radical daughters, I'm joined by two experts, Henry Goodman,

who played Tevier in Lindsay Posner's production in Sheffield and London in 2007 and 8,

and Anthony MacDonald, who designed and directed Hampshire's Grange Park Opera's new production with Bryn Turfell as Tevier,

which has been semi-staged for tonight's prom.

Please welcome them both.

Henry Goodman, let me start with what must be the archetypal moment for anyone who is playing the lead in Fiddler on the Roof.

When you got up and started singing, if I were a rich man, surely all those previous singers, Zero Mostel, Topol, even Leonard Nimoy must have been running through your mind.

Well, if they were at the moment when I was singing, then you've got a problem. But no, I think what you capture from them during rehearsal and studying and preparing the role

is the joy of life that this man has and the traumas and suras, as you would say in Yiddish, that he undergoes.

So it's like playing Shylock or any of these great roles or Richard III or any of the non-Jewish roles.

Or Leah, you are standing on the shoulders of people who have invested the role with deep humanity and their gifts.

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