World class opera singer to perform Fiddler
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RONAN — Where can you see a world class opera singer perform one of the most beloved musicals of all time? In Ronan, of course.
After 20 years of retirement from professional opera, Bob Ricketts is coming back to the stage — not in Europe, Chicago, or New York but in Ronan — to play Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.
There is no doubt that Ricketts is a natural performer. When he graces the stage, he commands attention. His beautiful voice booms across any house, as he toys with his character, shaping and evolving to become the personality he will portray in the play. He actively engages with his audience, taunting and teasing them to fall in love with Fiddler and Tevye all over again.
“I find, if I look in the house and I can find the one person that I can move in the performance — then I can be an artist,” Rickets explained. “I don’t have to move the whole audience — just one person.”
The Yiddish accent he projects is in complete contradiction to his cowboy boots and hat, but when he is in character and on that stage there is no mistaking that he is Tevye: poor Jewish milkman, father of five daughters, husband to Golde and God’s constant devotee.
Tevye is complex – much like Ricketts himself, both members of a community that sticks together for better or worse.
Like Tevye, Ricketts faces personal trials and tribulations. Both characters are constantly being barraged by outside influences, and struggle defining themselves in an ever-changing, never constant world.
For Ricketts, that struggle is an alcohol addiction.
The former opera singer describes his addiction to alcohol as a method of escape and a bad habit he embraced while touring with different troupes.
“It wasn’t the craving of alcohol,” Rickets explained. “It was a craving to get away from my (hardships).”
Some years were better than others for the faithful member of Alcoholics Anonymous. After 23 years of sobriety, Rickets spent a month relapsing before getting back on track last year.
Now he is quick with enthusiasm, a kind word and maybe a funny comment or two, but he does little to hide the disease that he has struggled with for so many years.
The decision to return to theater is not without price or emotion.
“Doing the show concerns me,” Rickets said. “I go to a lot of A.A. meetings, and I love it. I have support group — (but) this is one of those things that keeps me from drinking.”
But Ricketts refuses to let his former hindrances effect what the play is beginning to mean to him.
“It’s a celebration of being sober,” Rickets said. “If it weren’t for a group that I am a part of — that I can’t tell you about because it’s anonymous — I wouldn’t be alive today,” He said, making light of the serious illness that has on occasion almost killed him.
His addiction started young and was linked with the high of acting and singing on stage. He would take a few drinks before the performance and after the performance, then the traveling troupe would hit the town to help come down from their performance high.
“Performing is an opiate,” Ricketts said, explaining that the performing gave him an unequaled high.
Unfortunately, alcohol abuse was common practice among opera professionals and Ricketts watched many of his role models and his friends pay dearly. Ricketts himself was involved in a serious motorcycle accident while studying at Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.
Finally, Ricketts gave up drinking and performing, 24 and 20 years ago, respectively. To Ricketts both alcohol and performing walked hand in hand, and it’s a stroll that Ricketts is not eager to repeat.
Alcohol is not on the agenda for this performance, and Ricketts has broadened his support group, taken inventory of his qualities — the good, the bad and the ugly — in order to ensure a relapse like that of last year won’t happen again.
“Maybe this performance will be good for healing,” Ricketts said, hopefully.
For Ricketts, one of the most important aspects of performing and staying sober is camaraderie. And he has invited people struggling with addictions to come to the show on Friday night — ironically the same night he expects his old drinking buddies to attend.
“Don’t be alone,” Ricketts said to people struggling with addictions. “We isolate ourselves and that loneliness will lead to death and insanity.”
There is also a support group of eager actors and actresses on the stage at every rehearsal, willing and ready to make Fiddler a fantastic success.
“The nice thing about performances is for a moment you are sharing and you are not alone,” Ricketts said.
Rickets has a special German word for these moments of warm, well-being, where people are working together for the general good — gemutlishkeit — and he uses it to describe this cast.
Made up of teachers, business owners, students and the retired, the makeshift cast of Fiddler compensates for their lack of experience with a wonderful attitude, a willingness to learn and an incredible amount of talent waiting to be unleashed onto an audience.
Ricketts, who has performed in operas ranging from Puccini to Verde, prefers this cast to that of any Broadway production.
“The enthusiasm, the passion and the joy — you don’t get that in a professional troupe,” Rickets said. “In this cast there is no apathy.”
And judging from the character of Tevye he depicts so fully, there is no apathy on his end either.
Ricketts tosses in Yiddish words, struts around like the king of his barnyard, is quick to appease his daughters’ wishes, and abides by his wife’s law.
He even dances, and dances well — in at least one scene.
“That’s one of the things that makes community theater more fun,” Ricketts said. “It’s not a rigid art form and that in itself is a thing of beauty.”
The performance will be held on June 2, 3, 4, and 5 at 7 p.m. Tickets are on sale for $10 at the Ronan Middle School Office, The Valley Bank in St. Ignatius, and Three Dog Down in Polson.
