{"id":81089,"date":"2022-09-28T22:30:52","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T22:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lea-michele-is-just-the-gleeful-diva-this-funny-girl-needed\/"},"modified":"2022-09-28T22:30:52","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T22:30:52","slug":"lea-michele-is-just-the-gleeful-diva-this-funny-girl-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lea-michele-is-just-the-gleeful-diva-this-funny-girl-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"Lea Michele is just the gleeful diva this ‘Funny Girl’ needed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK \u2014 When Lea Michele launches missile-like into \u201cDon’t Rain on My Parade,\u201d she doesn’t just bring down the house. She brings down the whole darn block.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The important producers of the \u201cFunny Girl\u201d revival at the August Wilson Theater have at last come to their senses and let Michele loose on Fanny Brice and the Jule Styne-Bob Merrill score \u2014 numbers you long to hear belted as if the assignment were as as a mission to the moon. Via \u201cDon’t Rain on My Parade\u201d and \u201cPeople\u201d Michele takes an audience over that storied orb. It’s the performance in this 1964 backstage musical that an imbiber of golden-era Broadway wants \u2014 no, needs<\/i> \u2014 to drink in. An irresistible cocktail mixed with fizz, rocket fuel and pure talent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Need is a good word for Michele and her Brice. It’s no secret that the actress has made a virtual side hustle out of auditioning for the role, all the way back to the first season of \u201cGlee,\u201d when she sang \u201cDon’t Rain on My Parade\u201d and revealed a Barbra Streisand magnitude of chutzpah In \u201cPeople,\u201d Fanny sings about letting one’s grown-up pride hide all the need inside. Her portrayal, a role inherited this month from Beanie Feldstein, stands in counterpoint to Fanny’s assertion. Michele wears the need, grandly, on the outside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the wake of some punishing reviews, Feldstein left the production at the end of July, two months earlier than she had previously announced. Before Feldstein’s departure, producers had entered into negotiations for Michele to replace her. Julie Benko, Feldstein’s understudy, took over the role for the month of August, and continues in the show, playing Fanny on Thursdays.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That will to stardom, that ineffable self-belief, is the key to Fanny’s code, and Michele cracks it. What you’re reminded of at this stage of this revival, directed by Michael Mayer, is that \u201cFunny Girl\u201d is a vehicle with a cast of dozens but only one vital role. You could have the most winningly tough-minded Mrs. Brice (and you do in the other new cast member, Tovah Feldshuh, replacing Jane Lynch) and the handsomest Nick Arnstein (and you do in Ramin Karimloo). But without a Fanny Brice who shakes the building with mellifluous need, you may as well stay out in the parking lot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is \u201cFunny Girl’s\u201d strength and \u201cFunny Girl’s\u201d curse. The book by Isobel Lennart, refreshed by Harvey Fierstein, is standard-issue celebrity biography, recording Fanny’s inexorable rise in the Follies of Florenz Ziegfeld (a finely patrician Peter Francis James), and centering on the rocky romance of Brice and Arnstein. The ride up with Fanny in Act 1 is gleeful, but the climb back down in Act 2, after the shine has worn off the marriage, plunges the show into dreary melodramatics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mostly, the dialogue scenes exist as a kind of waiting room between Styne’s sumptuous ballads and up-tempo marches. In support, Jared Grimes continues to be a heel-and-toe-clicking asset as long-suffering Eddie, who wins the night with his quicksilver tap licks but can’t get the time of day from Fanny.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mayer and his design team don’t add much visual interest: The usually reliable costume designer, Susan Hilferty, creates some flapper-era looks for Brice that aren’t sufficiently clownish when they should be, or chic when they must be. And on second viewing, David Zinn’s set seems less a testament to ingenuity than to budget constraints. A little fine-tuning, too, should be addressed by sound designer Brian Ronan and music supervisor Michael Rafter for the Act 2 novelty number, \u201cRat-Tat-Tat-Tat,\u201d as the orchestra pretty much drowns Michele out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The homage to Streisand, Michele’s acknowledged idol, is apparent in the actress’s accomplished Noo Yawkese (she is, after all, a Jersey girl) and certainly on display in the show’s comic moments. Some grumbling about Michele’s comedic chops accompanied by the news this summer of her casting, but the gripes turn out to be overblown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Michele may be conventionally pretty, but she is still convincingly self-deprecating in \u201cHis Love Makes Me Beautiful,\u201d the faux Ziegfeld number that Fanny sabotages. And she has particular with the witty stream of consciousness in the Act 1 seduction song, \u201cYou Are Woman, I Am Man.\u201d And Karimloo, who at one point reveals a torso out of a fitness product infomercial, proves a polished partner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Face it, though: This is the Lea Michele Show, and her presence has the effect of setting the playhouse in order. \u201cI’m the Greatest Star,\u201d with its pulse-quickening affirmation of a young woman of enormous appetites and gifts, is delivered now with the full-throated confidence that leads easily to the conclusion that, yup, this is a star. Equally potent are Fanny’s torchy \u201cThe Music That Makes Me Dance,\u201d and a finale in which Fanny pulls herself out of an emotional cellar, proof of the preternatural resilience that defines a mortal who thrives in the limelight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The overeager audience starts cheering before Michele can get out even the first notes of her songs, and that’s a shame. Because it’s thrilling to hear her scale each of these signature challenges from start to finish. When she’s out there onstage, framed in azure light and singing with deep passion and total commitment, she really is a rhapsody in blue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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funny girl<\/b><\/i>, music by Jule Style, lyrics by Bob Merrill, book by Isobel Lennart and Harvey Fierstein. Directed by Michael Mayer. At August Wilson Theatre, 245 W. 52d St., New York. <\/i>funnygirlonbroadway.com<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 When Lea Michele launches missile-like into \u201cDon’t Rain on My Parade,\u201d she doesn’t just bring down the house. She brings down the whole darn block. The important producers of the \u201cFunny Girl\u201d revival at the August Wilson Theater have at last come to their senses and let Michele loose on Fanny Brice …<\/p>\n

Lea Michele is just the gleeful diva this ‘Funny Girl’ needed<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":46646,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lea-michele-belts-out-dont-rain-on-my-parade-from-broadway-stage-for-the-very-first-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":81089,"position":0},"title":"Lea Michele Belts Out ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ From Broadway Stage for the Very First Time","date":"August 16, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Hey, Mr. Arnstein, here she is!Lea Michele took to social media over the weekend to share a very special moment in her preparations for Broadway's funny girl. \u201cThe incredible @ephieaardema got a photo of me singing Don't Rain On My Parade on a Broadway stage for the first time ever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":81380,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/critics-return-to-funny-girl-starring-lea-michele-updating-live\/","url_meta":{"origin":81089,"position":1},"title":"Critics Return to FUNNY GIRL, Starring Lea Michele- Updating Live!","date":"September 29, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"New York theater critics got their first taste of Funny Girl when it opened on Broadway this past spring, starring Beanie Feldstein. Now the show has a new Fanny Brice in Lea Michele and a new Mrs. Brice in Tovah Feldshuh, and the critics are weighing in once more.This bittersweet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45745,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lea-michele-shares-first-look-at-funny-girl-rehearsals\/","url_meta":{"origin":81089,"position":2},"title":"Lea Michele shares first look at ‘Funny Girl’ rehearsals","date":"August 15, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"From Rachel Berry to Fanny Brice. Lea Michele has shared a photo of herself singing \u201cDon't Rain On My Parade\u201d while in rehearsals for her upcoming turn in the Broadway revival of \u201cFunny Girl.\u201d The \u201cGlee\u201d alum, 35, who is set to replace Beanie Feldstein in the iconic role \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":68333,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/every-funny-girl-song-performed-on-glee-ranked\/","url_meta":{"origin":81089,"position":3},"title":"Every ‘Funny Girl’ Song Performed on ‘Glee,’ Ranked","date":"September 7, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Pleak don't rain on every parade. Photo: FOX This week, after a long, dramatic behind-the-scenes saga, Lea Michele officially begins her tenure as Fanny Brice in funny girl on Broadway. It's a prophecy that's long been foretold in the ancient texts \u2014 the ancient texts being the hit TV series\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":68452,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lea-micheles-opening-night-in-funny-girl-standing-ovations-tears\/","url_meta":{"origin":81089,"position":4},"title":"Lea Michele’s Opening Night in ‘Funny Girl’: Standing Ovations, Tears","date":"September 7, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"It appears the weather gods didn't heed Fanny Brice's humble request. But not even a dreary, drizzly Tuesday in Manhattan could rain on Lea Michele's parade as the former \u201cGlee\u201d star made her long-anticipated debut in Broadway's \u201cFunny Girl\u201d revival. Before Michele could sing a note in her crystalline soprano,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12134,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/twitter-reacts-to-lea-micheles-funny-girl-casting\/","url_meta":{"origin":81089,"position":5},"title":"Twitter Reacts to Lea Michele’s ‘Funny Girl’ Casting","date":"July 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Photo: Astrid Stawiarz\/Getty Images for alice + olivia From today onward, American pop-culture history will be divided into two parts: before Lea Michele was cast in Broadway's funny girl revival, and after. On Monday, the Broadway production announced that the former Gleek would be replacing Beanie Feldstein as Fanny Brice,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Entertainment"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/OSMJ7QR6SAI63G5HQXNEEZQONE.jpg&w=1440","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81089"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}