Artist Spotlight: Meet Adam Heller of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’

For each of our seven productions this season, our Artist Spotlight feature will highlight one Muny star for you to get to know. Before and during the run of each show, we're sharing photos, videos, interviews and other exclusive content to better build the connection between our audience and the performers who grace our stage.

This week, we introduce you to Adam Heller, who stars as Tevye in the 11th Muny production of Fiddler on the Roof. The show runs July 19-25 and is proudly sponsored by the Staenberg Family Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis.

Adam is familiar to Muny audiences. He starred as Amos Hart in Chicago (2022 and 2021); as Benjamin Franklin in 1776 (2019); and opposite his real-life wife, Beth Leavel, as Herbie in Gypsy (2018).

"Returning here is the air I breathe," Adam says. "It's a great privilege and honor to be playing this part in this theatre for this audience. It's just a sensation."

He says he loves the fast pace of putting together a Muny show.

"I like that we can put together a show in 12 days with the best collaborators and then to have that sort of great St. Louis response and feel the 10,000 people out there is just tremendous fun," Adam says. "Things that I've anticipated I'm going to love about doing this show are many because a lot of it is about Tevye talking to God, and I'm under the stars here — and he can talk back!"

The legendary Fiddler on the Roof tells the story of Tevye the milkman, who clings to the Jewish customs of Anatevka, his hometown in pre-Revolutionary Russia. As his daughters question these old-fashioned traditions and the world changes ominously around them, Tevye is challenged to find a new way to learn and to love.  

Adam has played Tevye before, in a 2014 production of Fiddler on the Roof. That show, at Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, was directed by Rob Ruggiero, who also directs this Muny production.

"It's really terrific to reunite with him because I love his taste," Adam says. "He's just a tremendous artist, and we have a good shorthand with each other. So it's just great, if you're going to do a show that is as epic and as tough to do as this one, to have sort of a blueprint already."

On Broadway, Adam has appeared in Some Like It Hot; It Shoulda Been You; Elf; Caroline, or Change; Victor/Victoria; and Les Misérables.

With the compressed production timeline at The Muny, there isn't a lot of downtime. But Adam says he likes to make time for the St. Louis Zoo — and a few visits to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard.

"I think when you do something like this, it requires you to be really rested for the evening," Adam says. "And so I can't say I get around a lot, but the little I do, I always love."

Go into the Muny rehearsal studio with Adam as he sings a selection from "If I Were a Rich Man." Music Director/Conductor Darryl Archibald accompanies on piano.

Adam talks with Broadway World about his return to The Muny in a show that resonates deeply with him. Read the interview