But Is She Pretty? Why My Review Gets “Funny Girl” Right

Okay, I haven’t seen the 2022 Broadway revival of Funny Girl, starring Beanie Feldstein, Ramin Karimloo, Jane Lynch, and Jared Grimes.

I may have in my possession, however, a bootleg copy of the original show, dialogue and all, featuring Streisand’s final Broadway performance and recorded through the Winter Garden sound system—which begins with the house manager coming over the speaker to announce to the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, in this evening’s performance, the role of Fanny Brice will be played by… Barbra Streisand.”

Thunderous applause.

Then that overture.

Between that unique recording and the DVD of the movie, suffice it to say that I’m off-book for the whole musical and know exactly what landed, and what did not, for a mid-1960’s audience. After dozens of listens and viewings that still elicit my laughs, gasps, and tears, I disagree with the preponderance of reviewers who claim that Isobel Lennart’s book is plodding and requires even more reworking than was already done by Harvey Fierstein for the London and Broadway revivals.

These critics’ arguments also point to the fact that this show requires a leading lady who’s a comic genius, a gifted actor, and a belter and crooner for the ages. But what show doesn’t? Broadway audiences expect the best from every show, and it’s up to every show and star to deliver.

Yes, Funny Girl will always have the specter of Streisand haunting any actor who dares to play Fanny, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of room for a talented actor to make the role and the songs her own, as well as to woo even the most jaded Barbra fan. If Beanie, as the consensus of reviewers assert, can’t fill those roller skates, the fault rests with the team who cast her, the person who directed her, and the actor who accepted a role she wasn’t damn sure she could kill.

As for the casting of Fanny with a woman of unconventional looks or a full figure, or both, this show doesn’t just tolerate it; it demands it. But it also requires the actor playing Arnstein, as well as his director, to convince us that Nick is as physically attracted to Fanny as he is charmed by her raw talent, her Henry Street Jewish upbringing, and her constant self-effacing humor.

Such a love affair between a hottie and a nottie is entirely believable because I know from personal experience that the very aspects I loathe about myself happen to be exactly what some guys are looking for. It’s inexplicable to me, but plenty of young, sexy, fit men dig my big nose, go gaga for my silver stubble, and salivate over my dad bod. Convincing an audience that Nick falls for a far-from-fetching Fanny isn’t a hard sell and isn’t a failing of the book.

Some reviewers have further suggested that, instead of casting the hunky Karimloo as Nick, the creative team could’ve played with hiring a Nick who is as unconventionally handsome as Fanny is oddly beautiful.

Yet that’s when I realize these reviewers don’t get Funny Girl or Fanny at all. Fanny would never ever be attracted to a shlub. As soon as Fanny meets Nick, her choreography coach and quasi-manager Eddie makes a sincere play for Fanny’s affections. But Fanny immediately rebuffs Eddie’s advances, making fun of the fact that he even asked. It’s not that Eddie isn’t attractive; it’s that he isn’t attractive enough for someone as insecure as Fanny. After all, she was raised by a gaggle of women who assured her that “if a girl isn’t pretty,” she should either give up trying or should settle for whatever she can get.

Fanny, being Fanny, won’t settle. Not because she thinks she deserves more. No, she’s long internalized Mrs. Strakosh’s matter-of-fact warnings to flat-chested meeskites. Again, it’s not enough that perfectly-adequate Eddie wants Fanny because Fanny only wants those whom she knows will never want her—until, miraculously, one does.

But not right away.

The actor playing Nick, as well as the audience, is given time to warm up to the fact that maybe Nick wants more than to just be Fanny’s fan. Nick comes on the scene merely as an advocate of Fanny’s immense talent, as he dangerously bluffs Keeney into paying Fanny a small fortune for her future performances. The only thing that uncultured, Yiddishy Fanny can offer Nick in return are some good one-liners and advice for the laundering of his ruffled shirts. Then off Nick goes.

“I’ll never see him again,” sings a wistful Fanny. But, like Mrs. Strakosh, Fanny is merely stating a fact, not detailing her failing. Bagging Nick is so far from the realm of Fanny’s Sadie possibilities, she isn’t the least bit disappointed at this point.

Still, reviewers question how a girl; who possesses so much self-confidence that she has no problem declaring that she’s “the greatest star,” ends up winning over someone like the gruff, great Florenzzz Ziegfeld with her pestering pluck, and ultimately attains superstardom; ends up becoming such a suffering sap for a lout like Nick.

Fanny questions why Ziegfeld himself is calling little ol’ Brice to his theatre for a shot at celebrity when she hasn’t had enough hard knocks yet. Eddie then cracks (as well as foreshadows), “Maybe you’ll suffer later.” (Fanny is convinced of her own star power, yes. But even she assumes Nick was the one who arranged her introduction to Mr. Z.)

For whatever reason, Fanny fears that fame is coming too easily to her. But that’s part of the reason why her confidence in her talent doesn’t transfer to a belief in her worth as a desirable woman. The shtick and the slapstick do come easily to Fanny, and therefore do not hold the same value to her as her stage talents do to her increasingly adoring public. It’s not that Fanny takes her gifts for granted; it’s that she’s always had them. Fanny, like all of us, wants what she can’t have, not what she already has.

Fanny possesses such precious little self-esteem that she can’t even play beauty. She must make a farce out of “His Love Makes Me Beautiful,” even if it risks irreparably angering Mr. Ziegfeld. Like a poker-faced Nick, Fanny’s expectant-bride bluff luckily pays off.

Too bad Fanny doesn’t have the complete aplomb that her mama has, especially when Mrs. Brice “taught her everything she knows.” A woman who invites Florenzzz (the second time, this joke falls flat) Ziegfeld to a bash at her shtetl saloon by saying, “I’m giving a party for my Fanny. Believe me, Mr. Ziegfeld, if you’d like to come, oh, you would be most welcome,” is a broad who knows her self-worth!

Our first clue that gadabout Nick is serious about Fanny is that he willingly accompanies her to Rosie’s Henry Street gala, instead of to the glitzy New York nightclubs and restaurants where he doesn’t merely want to take her, he wants to be seen, be seen, with her—even though Fanny is sure the waltzing old gang back home will turn Nick off for good.

“I’ll never see him again,” again.

A true mensch, Nick sincerely slums it with the yentas, but Eddie and Rosie question Nick’s ease at fitting in. Rosie is a protective mother, and Eddie is jealous of how Fanny fawns over Nick for no good reason but not for all that Eddie has done for her. The real issue, although neither would admit it, is that Rosie and Eddie both can’t understand what a catch like Nick would see in a funny girl like Fanny. Lookism abounds in this play set in the early 1900s, just as it does today.

Alone in the alley with Nick and sliding right into the stirring ballad “People,” Fanny’s song has critics, and even Streisand herself, questioning its lyrics. Why are people who need people the luckiest people in the world? The converse of that dictum seems more apt, doesn’t it? Mama Ru says it best: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen?”

Yet I believe Bob Merrill knew exactly what he was writing—because he knew whom he was writing for. This is Fanny’s anthem and her first step into womanhood, as she admits aloud that she won’t be fully happy with a half-life. She’s not about to let her “grown-up pride hide all the [tremendous] need inside” of her. At this point, Fanny’s not at all convinced she’ll ever get “one special person,” let alone Nick, but she’s not going to pretend she doesn’t hunger and thirst for him. To act otherwise, she’s convinced, would be childish—and the caring, overbearing community of Henry Street raised her better.

Just because a work of art has a message that we now find dated or deluded doesn’t negate the fact that plenty of people still think they need other people to make them whole, instead of first being a self-actualized person, who then chooses to enter a relationship with a fellow self-accepting person. The question becomes: Can Fanny Brice transcend the time in which she lived and the torch-song torture that women then were expected to endure for their good-for-nothing men?

It’s still Act I, people.

(Note: As a man who worships Babs and who has heard her every version of “People” ad nauseum, I will honestly state that Streisand’s final Broadway performance of that iconic song is my very least favorite rendition, in spite of the protracted screams of “Brava!” that poured from that lucky audience.)

Nick is off as quickly as he came, again, but not without an indecent proposal offered to Fanny—that she happily confirms was indecent indeed!

(Streisand’s brief “People” reprise is lovely, though.)

While on tour in Bal-ti-more with the Follies, Nick is back again and invites Fanny to a fancy dinner in a private room. When she arrives, Fanny immediately makes fun of herself, as she defensively acts aloof around Nick, suave as ever. Nick calls her on her crap, and Fanny claps right back. (But did you hear Nick just refer to Fanny as “my love”?)

Nick wisely lets down his guard first and confesses that he was at Fanny’s last two opening nights but was too frightened to see her. The book is taking this unusual, and unusually intense, relationship slowly, just as the plot demands. By the time “You Are Woman” is finished, however, Fanny doesn’t need more explanation than this—and neither do we. Between a blue marble egg and more white roses, Fanny finally has someone who sees her, like she’s never dared seen herself.

After a whirlwind week of Arnstein courting Brice, Eddie shows up at the train station unexpectedly to accompany his old friend on to Chicago. Of course, Nick is off to New York with the intention of winning big. Yet he admits that his leaving is different this time because he loves Fanny. She half-jokingly asks him for his hand in marriage, which illustrates Fanny’s burgeoning confidence and desire to go after what she not only has always wanted but what she now thinks she just might get.

Nick accepts her decent proposal but demands that the marriage be done on his terms—and not until he has the means to support his bride as her dutiful breadwinner. (Foreshadowing alert!) For now, Nick presents Fanny with “I love you” #2 and is off.

“Emma!!!”   

If you thought Fanny wasn’t serious about what she sang in “People,” you don’t know this funny lady.

“Haven’t you any pride?” asks an ever-skeptical Eddie, echoing a main theme of “People.”

“I want a personal life, and I’m going to have it,” Fanny informs Ziegfeld, again risking her entire career and relationship with the empresario.

Even without the aid of a tugboat and the Statue of Liberty, Streisand effortlessly brings down the house and rings down the curtain with “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” (Notice how the parade Fanny vows to march in, even if doing so ends up being a mistake, has nothing to do with her beloved career in show biz. This character’s main objective is a man and a marriage. Becoming a famous funny girl is wonderful, but it’s never been the overriding feeling deep in her soul.)

By this time in the run, Barbra has infused so much soul into these musical comedy standards that they’re at times sung quite differently from what we can hear on the OBC album, and audiences at the time could readily imagine the wails and growls to come on Barbra’s first pop albums. Of course, soul is not just a style of singing. It’s investing oneself deeply into a performance. Barbra accomplished this on stage with such innate ease that you sometimes barely have time to laugh or cry. She doesn’t play to the audience; she plays to the story and her fellow actors. It’s our job to catch up and to be caught up along with her. We can marvel at the performance later. Right now, we’re invested in Fanny as much as Barbra is.

Now that I’m halfway through a thorough relistening of the original book and performances—that I will neither confirm nor deny I am in possession of, and I would never reveal my sources—I find the show completely hysterical, poignant, and compelling. So far, it’s still one of my favorite musicals. On every level.

Clearly, the original production of Funny Girl, as is, is worthy of serious analysis and gratefully stands up to such scrutiny. And that’s that I haven’t yet waxed ecstatic about the performances of Kay Medford as Mrs. Brice, Sydney Chaplin as Nicky Arnstein, Roger DeKoven as Ziegfeld, and Jean Stapleton as Mrs. Strakosh!

I can’t wait for Act II. (But you’ll have to wait for part 2 of this review.)

The wait is over! Read my review of Act II here.