Sit, don’t work. Photo: Matthew Murphy
The audience begins to applaud as soon as they hear the opening notes of “Don’t Rain on My Parade”. They know what they’re here for. You’ve heard Lea Michele sing it before, whether on Glee or the Tonys or in bootleg TikToks of that production. And yet, when she actually starts singing, it’s somehow better than expected. Her voice opens up, clear and expansive, and it pours out of her with a remarkable combination of lightness and power, as if casually splitting an atom in her throat. Eye on the target, and WHAM! One shot, one shot and BAM! I’ve seen her twice now, and both times the audience stood up for a mid-song ovation, forcing her to stop and start again with a big, surging “Hey, Mister Arnstein” of cascading kinetic energy. Lea Michele finally made Funny Girl, and damn it: here. She. Is.
But I don’t have to tell you that Lea Michele can sing. Her voice, agile and expansive, has propelled her from a career on Broadway as a child (in Les Miz and Ragtime) to Spring Awakening and Glee. There, as Rachel Barbra Berry, she ruled theater kids everywhere with an iron voice and the backing of television mastermind Ryan Murphy, who appears to have written the real-life screenplay. The other main facts are also on your mind when you take your seat in Funny Girl: the reputation of bullying; the fact that she’s replacing a star, Beanie Feldstein, who despite much public goodwill left the show early after poor reviews; that she has auditioned publicly for this performance all her adult life. With every eye roll to the audience and every belt, Michele seems to be braving the pressure to not just be good or great, but the greatest. This is less a starcraft than a gladiator fight. She makes it with blood on the sand.
All this despite – or perhaps because – Funny Girl is a dud herself. It launched Barbra Streisand’s career, and she and Michele (and Feldstein, for that matter) have battled uphill against its many shortcomings. The show dramatizes the rise and rise of Ziegfeld comedian Fanny Brice, and heavily fictionalizes her relationship with the slimy Nick Arnstein, in book scene after book scene that skews toward cheesy, sexist, boring, or all three at once. (Harvey Fierstein re-jigged Isobel Leonart’s book, although I wonder if it’s jiggable enough.) I wouldn’t wish the second act, which focuses on Brice and Arnstein’s broken marriage, on any actor or theater-goer. The sparkling veins beneath the cinder are the songs of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, from the trumpet fanfare of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” to the silky sheen of “People” and the madness of “The Greatest Star.” (“My Man”, written for the film, is still not on the show; you’ll have to go back to Glee if you want to hear her sing.)
When Feldstein opened the show, she couldn’t handle the songs, and as Helen Shaw pointed out, the “songs are the whole shit.” In Michele’s case, this works to her advantage. As the show is written, Fanny’s voice is the metonym for her fame. So as long as you genuinely believe she has the magic, you don’t necessarily have to buy her comedic skills or really any other aspect of her character. It’s like Shakespeare where the weather clears when the real king is on the throne. Michele isn’t a born comedian, but she finds a way to be charming with Fanny’s jokes as wide as the East River by just trying so hard to sell everyone. It’s like she’s hoping her Sketch Comedy 101 teacher will give her a gold star.
There is an inherent cruelty to Funny Girl’s humor. Each of Fanny’s successes takes her further from her husband. There are jokes about her body, her forgetfulness, her lack of book savvy (which, yes, drew giggles). Braving every sword, Michele accepts the humiliation that comes with the dream role. Even when you think the worst about her, it elicits a strange pang of sympathy.
Perhaps driven by this enthusiasm, the cast around Michele also feels stronger. About two feet shorter than Jane Lynch, Tovah Feldshuh is far more comfortable playing Fanny’s nagging Brooklyn mother. She carries the short poker game scenes (built in to cover set changes) with ease and aplomb, and at 73 she can somehow stretch her legs a lot higher than me. As Arnstein, Ramin Karimloo glows with a little more oomph towards Michele than she did with Feldstein, and their relationship is sexually marked by mutual admiration. (Both times I saw them perform, they broke off and paused while they fiddled with a decorative egg in the dinner scene, which was either a deliberate way of endearing them to the audience or a really error-prone prop. If it’s the former, then it worked.) This version of the script increases his presence in the second act, and while it felt like Feldstein’s iteration of the production was increasing his presence to take some of the pressure off of her, it directs it off. We know she’s the main attraction. Why are we away from her?
And indeed, with a confident and successful performance at its core, the other distracting decisions crunch more obviously. I don’t understand the logic of David Zinn’s set being built around a cylindrical silo, which implies that the grain industry has come to Henry Street in Brooklyn, and much of Michael Mayer’s directing doesn’t even move the cast that much Stage they constantly entangle in corners. Many of the costumes make the inflated follies look cheap. When you’re away from the big songs for too long, it’s impossible not to look at the song listing on your playbill and wonder how long you’ll have to wait for Michele’s voice to light the stage again.
All the baggage of getting the production back on track is on Michele, and she has to push it back with every song. The audience at the same time seems sure that she can pull it off, but at the moment not sure if she will actually pull it off. As much as Funny Girl’s structure forces you to pit one lead against the other, Michele versus Feldstein versus Streisand, it ends up being a competition between Lea Michele and herself. It’s a tautological experiment that happens seven times a week – can Lea Michele the person defeat Lea Michele the meme? yes she can But it’s also incredible that she can do it. Coincidentally – or maybe not – that’s the honest nut at the core of Funny Girl itself. Claim you have talent and they’ll make you double down your bet over and over again. It is famous as a high stakes gambling game. As I was about to go to the bathroom during the break at a Saturday matinee, I saw the bet in action. “You owe me $20,” one young woman told her friend. “She is unbelievable.”