***1/2 KNITTING ON THE ROOF

(Knitting Factory)

The Knitting Factory crowd does Hal Willner-style deconstruction of every Jewish boomer's favorite guilty pleasure, Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick's 1964 Broadway hit musical, Fiddler on the Roof. As in all pomo deconstructions, you have to ask: is it a joke, or what? And in the best tradition of such pranks, it turns out to be serious, good-humored, and finally very moving. There are enough strong, minor-key melodies and folk-dance rhythms for all the participants to dig into. A fair share of klezmers are represented: New Orleans Klezmer All Stars, Hasidic New Wave, Naftule's Dream. But who would have thought that Stephin Merritt's baritone vocals (supported by a plinking ukulele) would bring just the right degree of drunken gravitas to Tevye's bourgeois fantasy "If I Were a Rich Man"? Or that Come's Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw could so convincingly update the Tevye-and-Golda duet "Do You Love Me?" as a clipped, impatient telephone conversation?

Of course, there are still plenty of jokes to go around, with altered lyrics like "I hear they picked a bride for me/I hope . . . she puts out." But the Residents bring sexual urgency and a touch of mysticism to the humor of "Matchmaker." Pianist Uri Caine and tenor Lorin Sklamberg move in and out of the harmonies of "Sabbath Prayer" with a fervor that's hip-modern and deeply traditional. Negativland, Eugene Chadbourne, and Elliott Sharp use photo-album sound collages to support the general atmosphere. Davis S. Ware's solo-tenor-sax "Far from the Home I Love" is like Archie Shepp on Kol Nidre night, and the Paradox trio take it out with a pan-Middle Eastern mix of woodwinds, saz, and percussion that wafts across the desert sands into timelessness.

-- Jon Garelick