The Roof is on Fiddler: a Musical Parody, at Improv-Olympic. There are elements of parody in T.J. Shanoff and Rich Talarico’s twisted version of the beloved musical adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s comic stories. Most notably, Shanoff has set Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics to the tunes of pop songs from the past 30 years. One of the more hilarious numbers, “Matchmaker,” is sung to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” But Shanoff and Talarico have done nothing so bold as real satire in the tradition of Mad magazine: Frank Jacobs in “Antenna on the Roof” recast the story as the tale of Tevye’s rich, middle-aged, angst-ridden grandson living in Scarsdale and dreaming of the simplicity of shtetl life. They merely condense Joseph Stein’s script into 90 minutes, leaving intact many of Tevye’s funniest lines.
