Stephen Silver
“Funny Girl” may be the most Jewish Broadway musical this side of “Fiddler on the Roof.” And like “Fiddler,” it debuted on Broadway 60 years ago, in 1964.
The touring production of “Funny Girl” is headed to Philadelphia in July. But not everyone knows that the show played in Philadelphia before it arrived on the Great White Way.
Set mainly in the 1920s, the musical tells the story of the Jewish comedian Fanny Brice, her career and her tumultuous marriage to her second husband, Nicky Arnstein. The original Broadway musical was produced by Brice and Arnstein’s son-in-law, Ray Stark, and the score was written by the British Jewish composer Jule Styne.
The show’s initial journey to the stage was long and complex. At one point, Stephen Sondheim was approached to write the score but is said to have insisted that a Jewish performer portray Brice.
Ultimately, the production found its Jewish Fanny in Barbra Streisand, who would become synonymous with the part and such numbers as “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “I’m the Greatest Star” and “People,” numbers she has continued to perform in concerts and on albums in the decades since.
According to the Barbra Archives, while the show’s first out-of-town tryout was in Boston in January and February of 1964, it had a pair of tryout runs in Philadelphia. The show played at the Forrest Theatre between Feb. 4-22, then switched to the old Erlanger Theatre (on 21st and Market streets) from Feb. 24 to March 7 before opening in New York on March 26.
There was much reshuffling of the show during those previews; Jewish Broadway legend Jerome Robbins rejoined the “Funny Girl” company as the director in Philadelphia.
The show was successful, running for more than three years on Broadway, but despite eight nominations, it did not win a Tony Award.
A “Funny Girl” movie was made in 1968, directed by the German-Jewish director William Wyler, and it once again starred Streisand, who was making her film debut. Omar Sharif played Arnstein in a bit of casting that was controversial on both sides of the Arab/Israeli divide, especially after the Six-Day War broke out during the film’s production.
“You think Cairo got upset? You should see the letter I got from my Aunt Rose!,” Streisand famously said. (Streisand named different aunts in different tellings of the story.)
Despite the lack of a Tony, Streisand won her first Oscar for the “Funny Girl” film.
A movie sequel, “Funny Lady,” was made in 1975. It focused on a subsequent marriage of Brice’s, with Streisand acting opposite Jewish actor James Caan. Once again, the film had a Jewish director (Herbert Ross), and this time, the Jewish duo of John Kander and Fred Ebb (best known for Cabaret) wrote the score.
In the book “Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the Stage and Screen,” and specifically its chapter “How Jews Became Sexy,” Henry Bial wrote of how Streisand’s rise as a movie star and sex symbol in the late 1960s and early 1970s affected the cultural perception of Jewish women — a topic revisited in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 film “Licorice Pizza.”
Streisand extensively addressed her different versions of “Funny Girl” in her 2023 memoir, “My Name is Barbra.”
“Obviously, we were both Jewish, born in New York City … she was raised on the Lower East Side … so there would be a similar cadence in our speech,” Streisand wrote in the memoir of her interest in the role. “I’d already noticed that if I spoke in the Brooklyn accent I had heard growing up, with that distinctive Jewish delivery, people would often laugh … we both had Jewish mothers who were concerned about food and marrying us off … not necessarily in that order.”
Photo courtesy of Ensemble Arts Philly
For decades, “Funny Girl” wasn’t revived on Broadway, although it continued to have productions in other parts of the world and occasional tours; it even had its first significant staging in Israel in 2016.
In the spring of 2022, “Funny Girl” finally returned to Broadway with a revised book by the Jewish playwright Harvey Fierstein. Another Jewish actress, Beanie Feldstein, stepped into the role of Fanny Brice.
However, the production received negative reviews, leading to widespread rumors that Feldstein would be replaced in the Fanny role by actress Lea Michele. Michele is not Jewish, although her character on “Glee,” Rachel Berry, was — and that series even featured a storyline in which Rachel was angling to star in a Broadway revival of “Funny Girl.” Another Jewish actress, Tovah Feldshuh, stepped into the role of Brice’s mother — replacing another ex-“Glee” performer, Jane Lynch.
The Broadway show closed in September, but a national tour based on that production is now in progress, and it will reach Philadelphia in July. And while that out-of-town tryout 60 years ago was at the still-standing Forrest Theatre, this production will play at the Academy of Music from July 16-28.
Ensemble Arts Philly, the Kimmel Center’s new “presenting brand,” is hosting the show.
Katerina McCrimmon is playing Fanny Brice on the tour. McCrimmon is a Florida native of Cuban-American heritage.
“I’ve always been fighting to make it this far. As an actor and growing up a kid in the Miami suburbs, the daughter of a teacher, I didn’t have the resources that other kids who live in New York have. So, I was always fighting — and that’s who Fanny is. I relate to her tenacity to put herself out there without shame,” the actress said in an interview with 48 Hills when the production was in San Francisco.
Veteran actress Melissa Manchester, who comes from a Jewish family in New York, plays Mrs. Brice.
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.