As an avid theater-lover and the only female in a house of all guys, it’s been a challenge encouraging my three sons and husband to be enthusiastic about going to plays. Imagine, then, my surprise when my oldest son, Billy, 17, recently told me he wanted to go to see “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Durham Performing Arts Center.

“Yes, of course we can go,” I told him, giddily going online to check the seating chart and buy tickets. I had taken Billy and his younger brother, David, to see a performance of the same play about five years ago when it was at Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh; so, I thought perhaps something from that show had moved him and made him want to see it once more. I decided to find out. “Why do you want to see this particular play again?” I asked.

“The leading actor was in a James Bond movie,” Billy responded. “A major character in ‘For Your Eyes Only’ with Roger Moore.”

“What?” I replied, my illusions of getting season tickets for the entire family rapidly disappearing. Billy has long been a James Bond fan and has become quite the trivia expert and spy movie aficionado and critic.

He has an impressive collection of Bond movie items, including a few autographs. Two of those are from former Bond girls, one from Jane Seymour when she was in Raleigh several years ago and one from some other Bond lovely whose autograph Billy obtained while we were on vacation in Florida two years ago. He found out she was making an appearance in a town over an hour’s drive away, so my husband drove him there. I think I was set up for that one, though, because my husband volunteered, with no coaxing needed at all, to drive Billy while I had to spend the afternoon with my two bickering younger sons at Sea World, standing in line for hours to get into the whale show.

So, I guess Billy’s desire to go to a play just to see a Bond movie character shouldn’t really surprise me. Turns out the lead character, Chaim Topol or just Topol as they call him, played the lead role of Tevye, the father desperately trying to hold onto traditions of family and faith amidst the changes of the Russian Revolution. It is the role Topol himself made famous in the film version of “Fiddler.”

Billy and I went to the brand new, beautiful Durham Performing Arts Center on a Sunday evening and were treated to a fabulous performance by Topol and the cast, crew and orchestra. The words to “Sunrise, Sunset”

certainly rang more true with me than ever before since Billy will be going to college in the fall. And the DPAC marketing department was kind enough to give me a Topol-autographed poster for Billy’s Bond collection.

My next goal is for my husband and all three of my sons to see a production of “West Side Story,” which I think they will all enjoy.

Luckily, my youngest, 8-year-old Jason, seems to be a fan of the theater more than the others; when I took him to see “Annie” in the fall, he applauded wildly during the standing ovation and yelled “Bravo!” A kid after my own heart. His brothers applaud after shows, but it is usually with reluctance, as if it’s uncool to be openly responsive. Probably a teenage thing. I guess the only sure-fire way to get Billy to see “West Side Story” is if the part of Maria is played by a former Bond girl.