A dazzling Katerina McCrimmon makes for an authentic Fanny Brice in Funny Girl

Arts,Theater

Charles McNulty April 4, 2024

Theres a new Fanny Brice in town, and the question on everyones mind is can she live up to the role immortalized by Barbra Streisand?

The best thing about Katerina McCrimmons dazzling performance is that she makes the character her own. What else could she do? This touring production of the 2022 Broadway revival, directed by Michael Mayer, has its own history to contend with.

A miscast Beanie Feldstein launched the Broadway return of Funny Girl,

and even those of us predisposed to love her

couldnt help leaving the show shaking our heads in bafflement. Rescue eventually came in the nuclear package of Lea Michele, who seized the part of Fanny Brice as though it had been unfairly denied her ever since she had been singing songs from the show on Glee. It was a perfect confluence of talent, type and tenacity, and Michele delivered one of the most sensational Broadway performances of the 21st century a replacement who more than atoned for the revivals original sin of not casting her in the first place.

No one could expect lightning to strike in exactly the same way. This touring production, which opened at the Ahmanson Theatre on Wednesday, wisely opts to go in a completely different direction.

McCrimmon is a powerhouse singer, dont get me wrong. She brings the house down in Fannys poleaxing first-act numbers, Im the Greatest Star, People and Dont Rain on My Parade, from the golden age score by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. (

Despite some ill-calibrated acoustics, the overture alone seemed to have a euphoric effect on Ahmanson patrons with long memories.) But the distinguishing feature of McCrimmon’s performance is that it brings us closer to

the real Fanny Brice, the vaudeville comedian who struck it big in the Ziegfeld Follies. Streisand and Michel

e

were swathed in preternatural glamour. Fanny is made to feel like chopped liver in the looks department, but the star radiance of these performers couldnt help poking through the characters humble beginnings.

McCrimmons Fanny, by contrast, has the hectic air of a jobbing performer, a scrapper more than a sure thing, one who learned to talk as fast as humanly possible before the door slams in her face. What sets her apart is the authenticity of her humor. She knows how ludicrous she

appears

on stage in a lineup of leggy girls. But its her wisecracks with their racy, self-deprecating wildness that allow her to shine on her own terms.

The emphasis on Funny Girl tends to be on nailing the vintage New York Jewish milieu. Harvey Fiersteins revision of Isobel Lennart’s book relocates Fannys origins to Brooklyn from the Lower East Side, but it’s all the same world. Melissa Manchester, a game trouper, brings her flamboyant Bronx pedigree to the role of Mrs. Brice. (Its clear where Fanny has gotten her oy vey and fakakta exhalations from.) Projections of tenements give David Zinns fleet scenic design that old

–

timey Big Apple flavor.

But its the seamlessness between Fannys professional and personal life that McCrimmon captures to perfection. Consistency of character might not seem like such a spectacular theatrical virtue, but its what makes this Fanny not just unique but historically credible. McCrimmons portrayal resists the Broadway myth to find mortal radiance instead.

Feldstein, to her credit, was a more adept physical comedian. Fannys vaudeville turns lack the pop they had on Broadway. The vigor and vibrancy have faded on the road, but the backstage business is just right.

Smitten yet too sensitive to insist, Eddie Ryan (Izaiah Montaque Harris, tap dancing his way into our affections) takes Fanny under his wing, becoming her dance captain and

lovelorn

confidant. Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Coppage) is accustomed to ruling his Follies with an iron fist but he comes to recognize that strong-willed Fanny is a jackpot worth indulging. The other dancers cant help getting a kick out of the kook whos boosting box office for everyone.

When McCrimmons Fanny

is wooed

by the elegant,

smooth-talking, alluringl

y shady Nick Arnstein (Stephen Mark Lukas), she never loses Fanny Brices protective comic armor. No, the romance between this Fanny and Nick isnt as sultry as it was when Micheles Fanny and Ramin Karimloos Nick melted into each other

at the August Wilson Theatre in New York

. But what Lukas Nick sees in McCrimmons Fanny a bright, lovable, hilariously original woman redounds to his credit.

Lukas

s

portrayal deepens as the marriage between Nick and Fanny disintegrates. He cant stand the idea of living in her shadow which is no surprise from the guy who puts the moves on her while singing You Are Woman, I Am Man. But this Nick is ultimately as sympathetic as the shows heroine and just as much of a casualty of a world in which success costs everything you cherish most outside of your own survival.

The ending of Funny Girl this time around brought to mind the final moments of

Bertolt

Brechts Mother Courage and

H

er Children, when the protagonist

s

picks up her wagon in the face of all her losses and heads back into battle to sell her wares. Fanny is a more endearing figure of indomitable endurance but no less determined.

Show business wont stave off her loneliness she cant take the adoring audience home with her, as she

wistfully muses

but its how she presses on. The spotlight is where she thrives. As Fanny acknowledges in The Music That Makes Me Dance, shes better on stage than at intermission. And McCrimmon, whose voice grows more majestic and multi-hued as the musicals emotion ramps up, delivers this aching anthem with heartrending virtuosity.

This revival of Funny Girl revives the glory of musicals past, when songs seemed to spring out of their characters souls. Understanding that people who need people are the luckiest people of all, Fanny generously gives herself and theatergoers what we both have been desperately longing for.