Theatre Royal, August 5. Until October 3Tevye’s is such an indomitable heart as makes him larger than life: a force of nature who wears all that 1905 Imperial Russia can throw at a poor Jewish dairy farmer. Beyond coping, this champion of tradition even learns to adapt to a changing world. He can find joy in the face of adversity, and consoling humour in his unanswered querying of his God.

Few musicals are so dependent on one actor.

Troy Sussman follows Australian predecessors such as Hayes Gordon and Max Gillies. Gillies milked every drop of comedy from Tevye’s homespun philosophies and idle fancies. Gordon added voice and presence. When either sang If I Were a Rich Man, you were drawn deep into their hearts and humble aspirations; were warmed by their good cheer.

Sussman can’t quite get there – yet. He seemed nervous to begin on opening night, and therefore initially lacked presence. His singing voice, too, missed something of that barrel-chested rotundity, and not all the comedy was maximised. Yet, he slowly became more convincing, suggesting he may well come to fill out this great role, and the production will grow accordingly.

When composer Jerry Bock, lyricist Sheldon Harnick and book writer Joseph Stein, director Jerome Robbins and performer Zero Mostel first unleased the show in 1964, it became Broadway’s longest-running musical, finally knocked off that perch by the vastly inferior Grease in 1972. To put its success in perspective, it ran longer than likes of My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, South Pacific and The Sound of Music, thanks to Tevye and such other songwriting triumphs as Matchmaker, Matchmaker, To Life and the almost transcendental Sunrise, Sunset.

This London production (with Australian cast), originally directed by Jordan Fein, contains in Tevye’s Dream a sequence to astound. Tevye must reconcile his wife, Golde (Alexis Fishman), to their oldest daughter (Freya Boltman) marrying a poor young tailor (Felix Star) for love (of all things!), rather than a rich, elderly butcher (an excellent John Waters).

Golde’s bed suddenly becomes almost stage-width, with dead Grandma Tzeitel occupying the other end, and a clutch of the two-dozen cast dressed in white night attire helping enact the faux dream of which Tevye tells her. Golde can be forgiven for being taken in. Anyone would succumb to such simultaneously unearthly and witty staging.

Fishman and the daughters seem rather undercooked, while Sigrid Thornton overacts as Yente, the matchmaker. The singing, dancing and music are uniformly good, however, and Tom Scutt’s set is a land of wheat fields, rather than the usual village of Chagall-like dwellings.

Even the roof atop which fiddler Ben Adler beautifully plays is made of wheat. And it flies! Just like Tevye’s big heart – including when the Russians expel the community, which so often happened to their forebears across the centuries with scant warning.

“Perhaps that’s why we always wear our hats,” quips Tevye.