Streisand / LIVE 

The stage show of Funny Girl has long been a favorite production at the high school, regional and community theater level ... but for decades there was never a big Broadway revival.

When Barbra Streisand left the show in London in 1966, Funny Girl stopped being performed on big Broadway or West End stages, although there was a touring show that U.S. audiences could see from 1964 to 1968 with performers like Marilyn Michaels and Carmen Natiku as Fanny, Lilian Roth as Rosie, and Anthony George as Nick. 

The most interesting casting was probably at the Westbury Music Theater in Long Island — in 1967, Barbara Cook played Fanny and George Hamilton was Nick.  That must have been fascinating!

There wasn't a buzz around a new production of the show until the early 1990s.  Recording star Taylor Dayne was rumored to be cast as Fanny Brice.  She told Theater Pizzazz: “Jule Styne, who composed the music for the show, was actively looking for someone to do the role ... Anyway, the accompanist at the audition suggested I sing ‘The Music that Makes Me Dance’ but with a little Taylor in it. Jule did not like the way I did it; he wanted it sung the way he wrote it. So then I sang something else, with a lot of anger if I recall, and he loved it. And then he asked me to do the show. While it never happened, we had a great relationship until he passed away.”

The first revival that got some traction (and that had its eyes on an eventual Broadway run) was in 1996 with pop star Debbie Gibson (credited as “Deborah Gibson”) playing Fanny. Lyricist Bob Merrill contributed changes to that production. “Before Jule [Styne] passed away, we rewrote two of the songs and added a completely new song to the score,” Merrill told the press. “I did a rewrite of the book. I maintained everything that was in the show but tried to strengthen the character development.”

"It's the same thing with any revival," Gibson said in an interview with the Seattle Times. "There's always somebody who came first. But you do the best job you can and you don't worry about whether you're imitating someone else. The last thing I want to do is play Streisand; she's a hero of mine."

Gibson’s Funny Girl only toured the U.S. — it did not make the transition to Broadway.

On September 22, 2002 – for one night only – an array of singing actresses portrayed Fanny Brice at The Second Annual Benefit Concert for The Actors' Fund of America presented at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theater. Musical Director Seth Rudesky told the press, “You know, there was no matinée Fanny; Barbra did eight performances a week. That's why I think this is the best way to do it, with a bunch of Fannies.” 

Peter Gallagher portrayed Nick Arnstein for the concert; Kaye Ballard was Mrs. Brice; and John Scherer was Eddie Ryan. 

Here's a list of the Actors' Fund songs and the actresses who sang them:

• "I'm the Greatest Star" (Sutton Foster)
• "Cornet Man" (Idina Menzel)
• "Nicky Arnstein #1" (Ricki Lake)
• "His Love Makes Me Beautiful" (Kristin Chenoweth)
• "I Want To Be Seen With You Tonight" (LaChanze)
• "People" (Julia Murney)
• "You Are Woman, I Am Man" (Ana Gasteyer)
• "Don't Rain On My Parade" (Lillias White)
• "Sadie, Sadie" (Jane Krakowski)
• "Rat Tat Tat Tat" (Bebe Neuwirth)
• "Who Are You Now?" (Judy Kuhn)
• "Funny Girl" (Andrea Martin)
• "The Music That Makes Me Dance" (Carolee Carmello)

In 2011 the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles announced it would remount Funny Girl. The plan was to transfer the show to Broadway in 2012. Lauren Ambrose was cast as Fanny Brice and Bobby Cannavale as Nick Arnstein. Bartlett Sher was to direct. The production never materialized, though. Bob Boyett, a producer of the revival, said in a statement: “We have made the extremely difficult decision today to postpone our production of ‘Funny Girl.’ Given the current economic climate, many Broadway producing investors have found it impossible to maintain their standard level of financial commitment.”

Although Cannavale would have made a great Nick, I was always confused by the choice of Ms. Ambrose for Fanny.  “If A Girl Isn't Pretty” — but she is!

PHOTO:  Lauren Ambrose

More Funny Girl revival news arrived in March 2014. Lea Michele, the breakout star of television's Glee, announced in an interview that her boss Ryan Murphy bought the rights to stage Funny Girl.

Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, elaborated: “I have the rights to it. It’s something that we’re talking about ... [Lea] and I have made no mistake of our mutual love for that property, so if it could come together at a time that she’d be willing to make that commitment to go back to Broadway – which I don’t know that she is right now – it would have to be the right director and the right leading man.”

Glee utilized several songs from Funny Girl during its run.  But it was in Season Four where the Glee storyline focused on Lea Michele's character,  Rachel, actually auditioning then being cast as Fanny in a fictional Broadway remount of the show.

Eventually in 2015, Ryan  Murphy's interest in the property seemed to have waned. “I feel like we did so many of those songs and so many of those scenes [on Glee] that in a weird way, I feel like we did it in some way,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

Despite all the rumors of Lea Michele playing Fanny, the remounting of Funny Girl by Ryan Murphy never occurred.

Ironically, the Glee actress who plays the character who walks out on Rachel’s Broadway performance is playing Fanny’s mother in the 2022 stage revival — Jane Lynch.

PHOTO:  Lea Michele in costume as Fanny on an episode of Glee.

Michael Mayer was announced as director of a new revival of Funny Girl to open at London's Menier Chocolate Factory with previews from November 20, 2015, and a run until March 5, 2016. 

Because of the successful run at the Menier, the show transferred to the Savoy Theatre in London's West End, and began performances on April 9, 2016.

Olivier Award winner Sheridan Smith starred as Fanny Brice. The rest of the cast was: Darius Campbell (Nick), Valda Aviks (Mrs O'Malley), Natasha J Barnes (Emma/Mrs Meeker), Marilyn Cutts (Mrs Brice), Maurice Lane (Mr Keeney), Bruce Montague (Ziegfeld), Joel Montague (Eddie), and Gay Soper (Mrs Strakosh).

Harvey Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy and Kinky Boots) was hired to rewrite the book of the show for this production. “Basically they decided to build the second act around [Streisand] and gave up on the story-telling,” Fierstein explained to the Daily Mail. “It had stuff in it that wasn’t necessary any more for a modern audience.”

According to producer Sonia Friedman, the new script needed “to help us understand Nicky’s addictions,” she told the New York Times. “It would be very easy to play him as a single note and in this production we don’t.’

Fierstein decided “There was a diamond in there and it needed to be cut out. It’s not that I’ve cut it to make it shorter — I’ve edited it to make it stronger.”

Fierstein dropped two songs, moved around two songs, and added one new one from the Styne/Merrill trunk.

Fierstein told the Daily Mail the revised script concentrated on “the really lovely story about a woman in show business who wants to have a personal life and the career. ... and that still resonates.”

The Changes

The second act was greatly revised. After a quick reprise of "Don't Rain On My Parade" and a short scene (much like the film) between Nick and Fanny in Monte Carlo, they get married and "Sadie, Sadie" is sung by the cast. This differs greatly from Barbra's 1965 show — her second act began with wedding bells and a long, talky scene between Nick and Fanny in their Long Island mansion. In the Streisand version, they are already married and pregnant, and that scene was followed by "Sadie."

The 2015 show dropped "Find Yourself A Man" (a redundant song) and moved the first act's "Who Taught Her Everything?" to replace it.

Fierstein wrote more disagreements for the couple in act two, and Nick loses their fortune after singing the added song, "A Temporary Arrangement." This song was cut from the original show, and Jule Styne toyed with adding it to the movie, but did not.

More 2015 second act changes: "Who Are You Now?" is performed as a duet, with Nick echoing Fanny's lines. The end of the song segues into a reprise of "People." (A really lovely change!)

Fierstein notches up the drama in the following scene when Nick yells violently at Fanny: “I don't need you or your money to make me look like a man!”

Then the show cuts to a syrupy Ziegfeld number "What Do Happy People Do?" – a new addition –  to contrast the happy showbiz world with Fanny's collapsing personal life. (Streisand's show had a chorus dance number in this spot, without singing.)

Finally, the London Funny Girl inserted the movie song, "Funny Girl," right before Fanny transitions into "Don't Rain On My Parade (reprise)" to end the show.

Ultimately, Smith's star performance suffered when, for personal problems, she missed almost two months worth of shows, with her understudy going on for her. 

The London show closed October 2016. A cast album was released, and a video of the production ran in cinemas for one night in October 2018. That video was aired on the U.S. streaming channel, Broadway HD.