By SHARON EBERSON
The actress playing Fanny Brice, Leah Platt at Tuesday’s opening-night performance of Funny Girl, opens the show with, “Hello, gorgeous.”
That’s really not fair, to conjure Barbra Streisand from the get-go. The real-life entertainer at the center of the story is Brice, who rose from a New York tenement neighborhood to Ziegeld Follies’ Queen of Comedy. She left ’em laughing in the Roaring ’20s, while her fairy-tale love life was not blessed with a happily ever after.
(Image Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)
Funny Girl’s Brice was peppered with “you’re not pretty enough to succeed” early on. But as we all know, gorgeous is as gorgeous does. In the case of the National Tour at the Benedum Center through January 12, 2025, there’s a lot of that to go around.
The musical comedy and ballads are divine, the costumes are to die for, and the love story is epic, which makes how it ends – although most of us know what’s coming – all the more devastating.
There’s something A Star Is Born, or should I say, almost Shakespearean, about Funny Girl that I can’t shake. No, really. Hear me out. It’s the story of a doomed romance involving entertainment aristocracy and the ne’er do well who sweeps her off her feet. She’s an awkward but talented actress on her way to super stardom, he’s a charming gambler whose luck is about to run out.
It’s an irresistible story, with music that never goes out of style.
(Image Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)
Brice fell hard for the first ruffled shirt who strolled into her life, and would-be lothario Nick Arnstein unexpectedly reciprocated. In Funny Girl, based on the Broadway revival, they make beautiful music together, with classic Jule Styne-Bob Merrill songs such as I’m the Greatest Star, People and Don’t Rain on My Parade.
With a revised book by Harvey Fierstein, of Isobel Lennart’s original, that 2021-22 revival, having survived a casting to-do, spawned the tour that has touched down in Pittsburgh this week.
Opposite Platt, as the tour’s Arnstein, is Stephen Mark Lukas, who understudied the role on Broadway and has played Elder Price in The Book of Mormon, to give you an idea of his good looks and range. When he smiles, as seen through Platt’s eyes, you almost expect a light to shine from his pearly whites. Platt and Lukas have electric chemistry, which makes it all the sadder when you know what’s coming. The eager press is mentioned in passing, and you can imagine the blaring headlines of back then would seem equally heaven-sent for today’s tabloid media.
It’s good to go in knowing that Funny Girl, the stage musical, is not Funny Girl, the movie. If you have seen only the 1968 film, then some scenes may seem out of order, and songs you may be waiting for never come – notably, My Man, a song not by the original composer and lyricist, Styne and Merrill, respectively. The Swan and Roller Skate Rag were written specifically for the movie, while the song I Taught Her Everything She Knows didn’t make it to the screen – that’s all by way of saying I miss the “schvans” and My Man.
It’s not that Platt didn’t deliver an emotionally charged belt fest with The Music That Makes Me Dance and Finale, which defiantly resurrects Don’t Rain on My Parade. It did, however, make me realize how perfectly My Man – a French torch song popularized in English by Brice – fits the drama of the moment.
But that’s enough about what’s not there. There’s plenty to celebrate in bringing back to the stage the musical that made Streisand arguably “the greatest star” (and featured “assistant vocal arrangements” by Marvin Hamlisch, in his first Broadway gig). Pittsburgh CLO last offered the show in 2003, with the lead casting of Ana Gasteyer and Robert Cuccioli. In 1967, when PCLO was at the Civic Arena, Edie Adams played Fanny Brice.
But face it, it’s a musical that was hijacked by Streisand, and it’s hard not to compare. It’s also hard not to root for Platt, who usually fills in for lead Hannah Shankman for Thursday performances.
You tend to worry when that white paper drops out of a program and you learn the lead is absent. However, no need to fret in the case of Platt, who ages believably from a teen aggressively confident in her talent, then lovestruck and determined, to a woman fighting for her career and marriage. Lukas, too, loosens his tie and gives us two sides of a man deeply in love but unable to change his ways, particularly overcoming the norms of the man of the house as breadwinner.
Their performances are uplifted by the people in Brice’s orbit, including Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Melissa Manchester as her saloon-owning mother, and Mrs. Meeker (Christine Bunuan) and Mrs. Strakosh (Cheryl Stern), mother of “Sadie, Sadie, married lady.” You can see where Brice is coming from in all three of these nebby, loyal neighbors.
As Brice’s longtime choreographer and admirer, Eddie Ryan, Izaiah Montaque Harris tap dances up a storm. Ryan, Mrs. Brice and the enormously understanding Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Coppage) are among those who try to warn Fanny about Arnstein, but she won’t allow anyone to rain on her parade.
When Brice and Arnstein declare their lust/love, in the chauvinistically comedic You Are Woman, I Am Man, Platt is swathed not in periwinkle – my mind referencing the movie – but in a gold gown that seemed like an homage to Streisand in Helly, Dolly. That was fleeting. It’s one of the funniest and sexiest scenes in the show, directed with a sure hand by Tony-winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening).
The costumes by Susan Hilferty pop and glow against the noncommittal set design by David Zinn, and I especially liked the silver-and-white clad ensembles in the ironic Follies number, His Love Makes Me Beautiful. The sound on opening night was particularly sharp, supporting the 14-piece orchestra and full overtures while challenging and ultimately elevating Platt’s soaring belts and the Lower East Side immigrant Jewish accent that was Brice’s signature.
On a freezing cold night, you could feel the warm embrace of the audience, many of who were mouthing the words or bopping in their seats to the fairy tale of an American entertainment icon’s rise to fame, her ill-fated love, and enduring songs of a bygone Broadway era.
Hello, Funny Girl. Welcome back.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust / PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh presents the tour of Funny Girl at the Benedum Center. January 7 – 12, 2025. Tickets: https://trustarts.org/production/94987/funny-girl and 412-456-4800. Note: Among the ensemble is Mathew Fedorek, who Pittsburghers have watched grow up from Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center, to Penn State, to Pittsburgh CLO, where he played Big Deal and understudied Riff for director Baayork Lee in West Side Story. The ensemble also includes PCLO and Point Park University alum Myah Segura and Carnegie Mellon University Class of ’23’s Annabelle Duffy.
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