You’ve been living in Tevye’s head, and he in yours, for how long now?

I played Tevye when I was 17, at Interlochen summer camp. I played him again at Yale undergrad, when I was 21. It’s unusual to have a role that has been banging around in my psyche for 40-plus years. The crazy thing is that my husband saw that they were doing this Yiddish “Fiddler.” It was announced on Facebook. My agent said they’d already offered the role to another Broadway performer, but that person was rethinking the challenge. I said, “Well you tell them, one, I’ve worked with Joel Grey before,” which was true, “and, two, I speak Yiddish,” which wasn’t true. I had studied Yiddish.

He just told me that you spoke beautiful Yiddish, that that’s part of why he cast you.

The greatest accolade of this whole run is when we were downtown, we had to exit through the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and I would have countless Yiddish speakers start spouting to me in Yiddish. But I don’t really speak Yiddish.