Even if you don’t know who Sholom Aleichem was, you’re likely familiar with a few of his characters. Often called the “Yiddish Mark Twain, ” Aleichem was the Jewish-Ukrainian humorist whose stories about Tevye the Milkman and Anatevka later became the blockbuster musical Fiddler on the Roof.

Few actors are more qualified to play the elder Aleichem than stage and screen veteran Theodore Bikel, since he’s got more than 2,000 performances as Fiddler’s Tevye under his belt. The 85-year-old actor’s one-man show, Sholom Aleichem: Laughter through Tears, is a loving tribute to a writer whose work influenced Bikel’s life and career profoundly. If the show appears to lack structure at times, Bikel’s charisma and sincerity redeem it.

Bikel, who also originated the role of Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music and had supporting parts in classic movies like The Defiant Ones and My Fair Lady, takes the audience on a journey through aspects of Jewish identity via Aleichem’s life. He introduces the show as himself, and then turns into an Aleichem of endless stories and songs (sung in Yiddish, German and English). We hear about a cruel rabbi from Aleichem’s childhood, a rebellious school chum who inspired his passion for storytelling, his community’s yearning for the freedom of America, and his guilt-wracked reaction after learning of the 1903 Kishnev pogrom, which made his profession of writing humour for newspapers seem like “clowning at a gravesite”.

Of course Bikel can’t resist slipping back into his most famous role, and he transforms himself into everybody’s favourite God-griping milkman simply by putting on a workman’s cap. He delivers a sad epilogue to the Tevye stories in which the old man’s daughters have been long married off.

Throughout it all, Bikel’s deep, resonant voice with its musical Yiddish-Austrian accent keeps up the momentum. His storytelling feels rehearsed and intimate at the same time, as if coming from an aging uncle passing on his favourite yarns to a new generation. The order and selection of the stories and musical numbers occasionally seems random, leaping from tragedy to sentiment to light satire, but Bikel pulls the transitions off with little awkwardness.

Sholom Aleichem may resonate better with certain audience members than with others (e.g. those familiar with Yiddish storytelling tradition and/or Aleichem’s work), but it has enough charms to entertain everybody on some level.