Every actor loves when a call comes in out of the blue offering him a job.

When the invitation is the leading role in a world-famous musical, that's all the sweeter.

"Not necessarily," says Michael Bernardi.

"The call came from Ron Fassler," he says. "He was my acting coach when I was 17, when I wanted to go to SUNY-Purchase. He must have been a good enough coach," he says with a smile, "because I did get in."

Now, 13 years later, Michael was happy to hear from Fassler, who would be directing at the Priscilla Beach Theatre in Plymouth, MA and wanted him for the lead.

Then came the tough words: Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof.

Of course it's a great role. Zero Mostel, who originated it in 1964, won a Tony. Subsequent Tevyes Herschel Bernardi and Topol have received nominations.

That two men named Bernardi have now been mentioned is not a coincidence. Herschel Bernardi (1923-1986) is Michael Bernardi's father.

"He died when I was two," says Michael. "I've spent a lifetime of having people constantly tell me 'Oh, your father was magnificent as Tevye!'"

Herschel Bernardi as Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof.

Even Sheldon Harnick, Fiddler's Tony-winning lyricist, has often said that Herschel Bernardi was his all-time favorite Tevye. And think how many he's seen in the past 51 years.

"All those raves," says Bernardi, "have given me a block against Fiddler. My father's reputation with Tevye became too much for me to grasp."

When Michael was 10 and his mother told him that they would attend a Fiddler in their native Orange County, he dutifully went. "It starred someone famous who'd done it many times, but I don't remember who," he says. "I just kept thinking 'That's not Poppa' -- possibly because my mother kept saying to me 'They've got it all wrong!' She'd seen my father do it in the revival and remembered certain moments of his that were near and dear to her heart."

Between eleven through sixteen, Michael admits to an urge to see most everything his father did. "I needed to hear his voice," he explains. "I listened to his 'Showstoppers' album where he sang a lot of Broadway hits and listened to the songs he did in Zorba," he says, citing the 1968 musical in which Bernardi played the title character and received a Tony nomination.

"Then I found things on YouTube and Netflix, like Peter Gunn," he says. That was a 1958-61 TV series that featured Bernardi as a police lieutenant and garnered him an Emmy nomination.

One other performance made an impact. "I was also fond of An Evening with Herschel Bernardi (subtitled "A humorous & nostalgic look at Jewish life in America")," he says. "It contained some lullabies that I feel I heard when I was a baby. So I listened to that a lot."

But not Fiddler - "even though my father made an album of its songs," he says. "I did listen to it once -- and wound up not remembering much about it. I just wasn't connecting to Fiddler."

So when Fassler's call came in, Michael was of two minds. "One part of me was freaking out and the other part desperately wanted to say yes." The dates - July 10-25 -- would even coincide with the Broadway revival that his father did in his last-ever Broadway appearance from July 9 through August 23, 1981.

Fassler's offer arrived at a crossroads in Michael's life. "I've wanted to be an actor since I was four," he says. "Soon after I made the decision, at every Passover dinner I stood over everyone and told jokes. So when I was eight, my mother signed me up for a kids' stand-up comedy class. The culmination was a night at the world-famous L.A. Comedy Club. Many of the other kids had stage fright but I didn't. I made jokes about Lorena Bobbitt and I killed," he says in a voice that implies he won't entertain any rebuttals on the matter.

"They hired me -- for money, even -- and I did it for three years. Then the adult comics started complaining that I was getting the prime-time spot and they switched me to Tuesday and Wednesday where I entertained two drunks in the audience."

In high school Michael, in addition to playing middle linebacker on the football team, also played Marcellus in The Music Man and the lead in The House of Blue Leaves. SUNY-Purchase, not the NFL, won out.

Michael Bernardi as Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof at the Priscilla Beach Theatre in Plymouth, MA. (Photo © Lauren Owens for The Patriot Ledger)

"One reason I wanted SUNY was that it would give me the opportunity to be near New York where my father had been born. He and his family were great stars of the Yiddish Theatre and toured so much they could have been called The Jewish Partridge Family. Actually, my father's father passed away when he was eight, so when a book about the Bernardi family was written, my father wrote in his introduction 'This foreword should be retitled I Don't Remember Papa.' I grew up feeling much the same."

Not quite. "I've always remembered his smell," he says, neither meaning anything offensive nor indicating that his father needed Irish Spring and Right Guard. Michael is simply referring to the distinct aroma that each of us has. "Even when I was growing up," he says, "when I came across his items that were mixed in with my mother's, I could pick out which ones were his."

After SUNY, Michael admits to some "bad years of auditioning. I got into a three-year grad program at USC where I was getting great parts -- and was completely miserable." His expression changes from frustrated to admiring. "The program did its job, though, in asking all of us 'What's your truth?' I realized my truth was that I was hiding. I'd been hearing all my life 'Your father was a legend,' and I felt the pressure to become a legend, too."

Michael felt that the best choice was to leave school. "It was very empowering to say I'm ready to go out in the world," he says. "And then I got the call from Ron - and said yes."

Although more than a third of a century had passed since Herschel Bernardi had donned his Tevye costume, Michael's mother Teri had held onto it and sent it to him.

"His boots, his shirt, his jacket and his vest," he catalogues. "And there was his smell, still there. I worried that if I wore these clothes that they wouldn't smell like him anymore. So this became a major conflict."

Yes, there was the other side of the coin -- which Michael describes as "that Freudian thing of how a boy doesn't become a man until he can surpass his father." But to take away his father's memory forever?

Michael admits that his conflict deepened. "I sat there weeping. And then I finally looked up to heaven and asked 'Papa, may I wear your clothes?'"

He gives a wry, I-know-this-sounds-strange smile. "And before I could even finish the sentence, I felt a lightning bolt in my head that said "They're YOUR clothes now.' And the air changed all around me, and I smiled as I put the shirt on. It felt like the hug I'd been waiting for all those lost years."

Under Fassler's scrupulous direction, Bernardi expressed world-weariness mixed with humor. He didn't seem craven when dreaming of being a rich man and appeared deeply religious during the Sabbath prayer. He summoned up one kind of strength when confronting The Constable and another when dealing with Chava after she told of her love for a Gentile.

The cast of Fiddler On The Roof at the Priscilla Beach Theatre (Photo © Priscilla Beach Theatre Facebook)

Michael's most impressive moment came after Tzeitel showed her agony at being promised to Lazar Wolf. When he saw that she was too scared to immediately divulge what she'd promised to Motel, Michael urgently cried out, even commanded "Tell me!" His vitally concerned voice revealed a caring father who would move heaven, earth and hell to make his daughter happy. Never mind Lazar; his first-born came first.

"Hearing specifics about my father's performance did make me consider doing it 'his' way, for so many viewed it the 'right' way," he says. "Ultimately, though, making it my own was very freeing."

Freeing enough, apparently, for Michael to dare to audition for the upcoming Broadway revival. Director Bartlett Sher was impressed enough to cast him as Mordcha, the Innkeeper, and gave him one other assignment: to understudy Tevye.

Now Michael Bernardi knows he can do it.



You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com. Check out his weekly column each Monday at www.broadwayselect.com, Tuesday at www.masterworksbroadway.com and Friday atwww.kritzerland.com. His bookThe Great Parade: Broadway's Astonishing, Never-To-Be Forgotten 1963-1964 Season is now available at www.amazon.com.