When Lara Pulver’s agent contacted her last year to say the producers of Fiddler on the Roof would like her for a role in the musical’s revival at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, the actress thought she was due to play one of Tevye’s five daughters, perhaps Hodel or Tzeitel.
In fact, she was wanted for the part of Golde, Tevye’s wife, and Pulver, who is in her early 40s, admits she was shocked. “In my head I had presumed she was much older than me. But then Rabbi Rose (Prevezer, the Jewish adviser to the production), talked about the fact that in 1905, when Fiddler is set, women might only live to 50 or 60. When I burst that bubble, I realised Golde could be me — and I could be Golde”.
Pulver is also a mother of daughters, though hers are just eight and four. And her interpretation of Golde won her an Olivier award nomination, one of Fiddler’s 13 nominations. Now the hugely-praised production is opening at the Barbican Theatre for a limited eight-week run, and Pulver took a quick break from rehearsals for the show to talk about her life on stage — and on film and TV.
Born in Southend, the younger of two sisters, Pulver has an interesting background to draw on for her role as Golde. Her father was Jewish and her mother, whom Pulver describes as “very British, very private”, converted to Judaism in order to marry, though Pulver says she was not aware of that until she was having “more adult conversations” with her mother.
Lara Pulver, centre, as Golde in Fiddler at Regents Park Open Air Theatre last summer. Photo: Marc Brenner
She says that “religion wasn’t really spoken about in our house, though I did see my grandmother light Shabbat candles every Friday. As an adult, I’ve only actually been in synagogue twice for weddings, so I felt a bit of a fraud in this production. But then there was a huge realisation that it’s in you, in your heritage, there whether you are aware of it or not, whether you are practising or not, there is faith, there is spirituality. And it’s been wonderful to work with a company of actors who also come from completely different backgrounds and have different journeys on faith and religion.”
Pulver’s route to stage and screen began when she was just 11. Her parents had separated and she and her sister were living with their mother in Dartford, Kent. “I was really sporty as a kid, and my mother was a single mother and working. She must have thought about what to do with us during the long summer holidays. There was an advertisement in our local library in Dartford for an amateur production of Annie. My mum said, I should go — but I said I wasn’t interested. I was much happier on the tennis court or the netball court.”
She still doesn’t know how her mother convinced her to go. “We walked down to this church hall about 10 minutes from where we lived. I was in plimsolls, my PE shorts and my little polo shirt. And all the kids there looked like stage school kids, like they’d been dancing since they were in the womb. But Patricia Watson, the director, looked at me and said, ‘there’s our Annie’ — maybe because I looked like an absolute misfit”.
Lara Pulver and Adam Dannheiser in Fiddler. Photo: Johan Persson
Pulver, though she’d never given it much thought, could sing. And she says of her younger self that she was “very open to conversation and creativity and being collaborative. So there was something about that rehearsal period leading up to the show that felt like home”. Rehearsal times, she says, are still her favourite thing.
Post-Annie, it was suggested that Pulver audition for the National Youth Music Theatre. Her cohort, when she joined, included such future UK theatre stars as Jude Law, James Corden, Sheridan Smith and Eddie Redmayne. “It was such an extraordinary place to be. I spent my half-terms and summer holidays just creating work with these people. I went to Broadway when I was 14 and did this show called Pendragon about King Arthur. Then that show travelled to Taipei and Taiwan… I got to see the world very, very young.”
Her husband, she says, jokes that “I have to go and do some TV and film to pay for my theatre habit”. She was a memorable Irene Adler in the Benedict Cumberbatch version of Sherlock on BBC1, and is now starring in the lauded Amazon Prime series MobLand, with a glittering line-up which includes Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. “They’re all theatre and film and TV actors. I’m not sure people pigeonhole any more, which is really lovely. I feel very fortunate that I get to do what I do in all those different ways.”
For Pulver, the transfer from Regent’s Park Open Air to the Barbican is an opportunity “to bring the outdoors indoors. And Tom Scutt, the designer for the Regent’s Park production, has done another wonderful design for the Barbican.”
As she was leaving the stage door one night after the Regent’s Park production, Pulver was spotted by some members of the audience. “One woman said, look, that’s Golde. But she’s too thin, Golde should be more voluptuous. And I thought, my goodness, these people were starving in Ukraine in 1905, I don’t think we need to worry!”
Lara Pulver finished her chicken sandwich and raced back to rehearsals.
Fiddler on the Roof opens at the Barbican Theatre on May 24. barbican.org.uk
