By Stephen Silver
When “Funny Girl,” the popular Broadway musical that starred Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice on both stage and screen in the 1960s, was revived for the first time in 2022, Broadway gossip hounds obsessed over the replacement of Beanie Feldstein, who was playing the lead role of Fanny Brice, with Lea Michele.
But in between their runs came actress Julie Benko, who had been the standby for the lead role and ended up stepping in for an acclaimed run. She then remained as an understudy for some time after that. Benko’s run in the show was so well-received that the New York Times named her a Breakout Star for 2022.
Now, the Jewish star is bringing her cabaret act to Philadelphia, where she will tell that story and others.
The show is called “Standby, Me,” and Benko is set to perform May 19 and 20, as part of a series known as Broadway Cabaret at the Rittenhouse Grill. The Rittenhouse Grill is the restaurant in the Warwick Hotel, formerly the spot of The Prime Rib.
Benko spent many years as an understudy or standby, including for four of the five daughters in “Fiddler on the Roof” — and will tell stories from throughout her career, while also singing songs she has performed on stage. And yes, the show will explain what the difference is between a standby, an understudy, an alternate and a swing.
“The cabaret, I’ve been doing alongside my Broadway career for 12 years, and it’s sort of become my diary, I would say, the way that I process whatever I’m going through in my life,” Benko said. “So as soon as Funny Girl was over, I was figuring out how to process that.”
After a while, Benko started getting a lot of questions about what it’s like to be a standby, how she rehearses and other aspects of performing.
“So [I decided], I’m going to tell you in a show with music from these shows that I have been lucky enough to perform in throughout my career,” she said. “So it honestly kind of wrote itself. All I had to do was write down a bunch of the things that happened to me, and they made for a fun peek backstage into what it’s like in show business.”
She has performed the “Standby, Me” show in various places, including Cafe Carlyle in New York. She also has a second cabaret show, “A Star Is Born,” which is mostly about pregnancy and motherhood, as Benko and her husband Jason Yeager have a five-month-old daughter. Yeager plays the piano in the show while also playing himself as a character.
Three of the shows with which Benko has been most associated, “Funny Girl,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Harmony,” are specifically Jewish-themed, something that was noted by Randy Swartz, the famed local showbiz impresario who started the Broadway Cabaret at the Rittenhouse Grill concept.
“Broadway has been, for the last hundred-something years, fundamentally driven by a high percentage of the Jewish creative element,” Swartz said, referencing the Gershwins, Stephen Sondheim and numerous other performers and composers.
“She’s very much engaged in that, as part of her identity,” Swartz said of Benko.
He pointed to the singer’s performance of “Tomorrow,” from “Annie,” as part of a “Shabbat on Broadway” event in 2024.
“I can’t say that I was looking to only do Jewish shows or play Jewish roles, but … as an actor, you have very little control over what comes your way. But when things are right, they’re right,” Benko said. “And you know, I think being in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ [on Broadway] was a big, full-circle moment for me because my very first sort of full-length show, the one that really got me into theater, was ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at the JCC.”
When she tried out for that show, her entire family ended up cast in it.
“And then post-pandemic, ‘Funny Girl.’ And then that led to ‘Harmony.’ It was like, suddenly, I became the Jewish actress. You know, the face of female Jews on Broadway, or in Broadway musicals, which sort of happened by accident. But I was happy to get to take up that mantle, and it’s actually opened up a lot of doors for me.”
Benko has frequently been asked to perform at synagogues and other Jewish institutions and has gotten involved with such organizations as the JNF, the ADL and the Educational Alliance.
She has performed in Philadelphia before, in the national tours of “Spring Awakening” and “Les Misérables,” both at the Academy of Music.
As mentioned, the Broadway Cabaret at the Rittenhouse Grill series is the brainchild of Swartz, the legendary Philadelphia showbiz impresario who retired from Penn Live Arts in 2020 after a 50-year career as a producer and presenter. Swartz, amid all of his work with dance and theater, has worked on cabaret shows, including one with Stephen Schwartz, the Jewish composer who wrote the music for “Wicked.”
“I always had this sort of love for cabaret,” Swartz said.
After a visit to the Cafe Carlyle in New York, “I looked around and said, ‘You know, we haven’t had cabaret in Philadelphia for at least 15 years. And I know a place that would be perfect for it, if they’re up for it.’”
The idea was to do it on Monday nights, which is typically a night off on Broadway, and would allow performers to take a quick trip down to Philadelphia for a show. The concept debuted in December 2023 with Tony Yazbeck. The current spring season started in February with Amanda McBroom, followed by Christopher Sieber’s one-man show in early April.
“On the way, the Julie Benko phenomenon took place,” he said, referring to the “reviews and accolades” Benko received from her “Funny Girl” performance.
He described Benko’s show as “her story of how she ended up never getting the part, always being the backup, the sub, etc., and that was her career,” before she broke out in “Funny Girl.”
After a break for the summer — “we let everybody go down the shore,” Swartz said — the cabaret’s fall season will kick off with Adam Pascal, best known for “Rent.” Darius de Haas, who performed the singing voice of Shy Baldwin on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” is also in the fall lineup.
A reservation covers the show, dinner and gratuity. The first Julie Benko show is sold out, but the second still has tickets available on rittenhousegrill.com.
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.