“My mum was a single parent in Dartford, and saw a notice in our local library for a production of Annie... I wasn’t interested, I was a sporty girl but she walked me down to the village hall... I was just in my PE kit when all the other girls were stage kids in their glitzy outfit outfits, I looked like such a misfit, a skinny little runt, but the director took one look at me and her eyes lit up... she said, ‘there’s our Annie.’”
Lara Pulver is in her dressing room in the depths of the Barbican, with the new run of Fiddler on the Roof under way and scoring another round of 5 stars and ticket mayhem, and she’s recounting where it all started. She’s thinking about mums a lot, having two young children of her own and because she is playing Golde in the musical, the mum of five girls and arguably her husband too, the exuberant and chaotic Tevye (played by Adam Dannheisser).
Pulver immediately strikes you as very alive, if that’s not a silly thing to say, but it’s just the way her eyes take up most of the room as she seeks to accommodate you - “I’m a Jewish mother, a feeder, you can’t come to my house without someone trying to put food in your mouth,” she’ll say later - and how you can just imagine how she grabbed the attention back in that village hall, and has continued to do throughout her stellar career on stage - Olivier award-winning for Gypsy in 2016 - and starring in nation TV treasures like Spooks and Sherlock.
Even now though she is finding new career peaks. Fiddler is one, and she’s also been on our screens in Mobland, the violent and bizarre Guy Ritchie-directed gangster series starring Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan; it’s been a huge hit for Paramount+ and has introduced Pulver to a different demographic.
“I’ve been stopped on the train by 18 year old lads on the way to the football on a Saturday, going, ‘You're in Mobland, we love that show,’” says says, before laughing about the unique chaos of a series which was being written as they were making it.
“It was absolutely nuts, I don't know how it's allowed to happen! But it's becoming more frequent that you turn up on set and it's like, ‘here's your lines for the day.’ I'm not sure it always creates the best work, because no one has time to prep. But the show is brilliantly bonkers, hugely entertaining. I could watch Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren play those characters all day. I don't care about their accents, they’re brilliant!”
And now to Fiddler on the Roof, the main reason we’re here of course and which, in my humble opinion ladies and gentlemen, is the finest thing on London stages right now, and that’s really saying something. This production was originally on Broadway before Pulver featured in a hugely successful run at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 2023. Moving indoors to the Barbican is giving Londoners a chance to see it again at a time when its themes are even more resonant than it was back then, when the Ukraine war had begun.
“To be honest, when I first arrived at the Barbican, I missed the sky,” she says, “There was something about the open air theatre that made you so present, like a gust of wind would come through the middle of a scene or rain or a big full moon above the audience's head...
People always say, ‘is it more resonant now because of what's going on in the world?’ Interestingly, Adam Dannheisser, who plays Tevye in the show, was in the production on Broadway, and at that time Syrian refugees were in the press. He said, ‘it's heartbreaking that the show is always relevant.’
Set in a fictional Russian village near Kiev – now Ukraine – it is about a milkman in a Jewish community, a big-hearted man conscious of “Tradition!” in his Jewish community but also the happiness of his five daughters who are starting to do things their own way, like wanting to fall in love rather than have marriages arranged for them.
It is about faith and family and relationship - and the senseless attacks by authoritarian powers on communities they wish to eliminate. To say it hits home is an understatement. Quite honestly, when the world has gone to shit, when persecution and prejudice still run riot, even more so than ever, this show provides a humane way to understand the horrors of the world, when real lives lost can become mere statistics.
“The night before last, there were three Ukrainian women at the Stage Door who were in bits, having come to London 5 years ago,” Pulver says, “They were talking to me about their hometown that no longer exists and what leaving is for people on any level. In my role in the play, I observe a lot, and a part of that is observing the audience, and you can see everyone is moved for many different reasons.”
She says the cast and crew aren’t filtering news stories into the production as such, but says the director Jordan Fein makes space for everyone to have conversations. However, Pulver says that this isn’t about the actors working out their personal feelings on stage.
“This might be controversial, but I’ve never felt like my job is therapy,” she says, “I have a slight problem with actors who say that. No, you're telling a story and your therapy gets done elsewhere. Otherwise it’s a road to disaster.”
That said, playing Golde, the mother having to let go of three of her daughters to varying degrees of upset, can be gruelling: “I feel like I need new eye ducts, because I’m sobbing, and it’s not even an actorly choice of mine, it’s just so gut-wrenching.”
Pulver has two children with her husband, fellow actor Raza Jaffrey, and they recently moved back to London after living in LA for years. She says she is, “dating London again, rediscovering it, having been away for so long,” and is enjoying being able to make dinner at home before coming in to do the play, balancing home and work in a way not always possible before: “it’s the dream and is one of the big reasons we came back, to have the opportunity to be back on stage.”
Given her family commitments, she connects with Golde on many levels.
“I think as a mum, I’m feeling the conflict of Golde’s relationship with her daughters. Their choices that you no longer control. Actually your entire job has been to make them as independent as possible and let them go. But live on stage I'm watching three of my daughters making these huge life choices that reflect on us as a couple, reflect on how we're perceived within our community. All these things resonate.”
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Part of the genius of Pulver’s performance as Golde, the perfect stoic foil to Tevye’s chaos, is the way she holds in her pain, which Pulver thinks – correctly – that it is more interesting and moving for audiences to watch: “There's a line which says, ‘we suffer in silence’, right? That rings with me every single day. You bite down. And that's what I aim for in this.”
Something in the vibration of the show is really affecting in this manner, the silences and restraint mingling with wild dancing and drunkenness, human behaviour carrying on as it does for all of us… it’s a show easy to connect with, and a sign of some meaningful things happening culturally.
“I'm not sure whether it's escapism or whether it's just coincidence that these particular stories have come to the surface at this moment in time,” she says, “I remember when I was doing Spooks years ago, people would say, ‘oh my gosh, you literally wrote history!’ But sometimes it's just sheer coincidence that they come at these moments in time. But it's wonderful that theatre is doing so well, and we're doing our damnedest to make it as accessible as possible. The broader the conversation, the better.”
Fiddler on the Roof at the Barbican review: 'This is a must-see'
This seems like a great new era for Pulver too, settled back in the country, lots of work, and where she knows what she wants from her career. She says she was losing the joy of acting a few years back; she was competitive, but the rewards were never enough, and she “had to find joy in the journey again…it was all about the end result, like congratulations you’ve won the award! But then boom, it’s empty. And what’s next? I had a horrible feeling of not being present.
“I didn't want to just tick boxes anymore. And if that meant not doing this job, I was open to that.”
Circling back to the little sporty runt Annie, it was about re-connecting to the collaborative part of it:
“I'm not really into solo sport. There's something about my active nature and how theatre, film, TV, requires all of us to bring our A game for it to work. I think the first time I noticed that was in the table read of Sherlock. I suddenly was aware that everyone was at the top of their game in the room, and it was the most exciting playground to be in.
“That's when I was like, ‘oh, I don't want to do a solo show.’ I've got no interest in doing One Night With Lara Pulver. Everything for me is about how we collaboratively create.”
This realisation has become very freeing:
“It was really interesting then going into Mobland and Fiddler. I don't know how this show is going to be received, I have no barometer anymore about it being a hit or us winning Best Revival or Mobland being a critically acclaimed show. It feels really freeing to think that’s not in my control, and I actually don't need that affirmation. I’ll just keep carrying on doing what I do. I've enjoyed it even more since then and I'm probably doing better work.”
She smiles, saying, “Look we’re not saving lives.”
Nope, but definitely helping us all make sense of them.
