“If a girl isn’t pretty like a Miss Atlantic City, she should dump the stage and try another route,” dictate the Brooklyn denizens of comedienne Fanny Brice’s initial bout with fame. This ideology, a conceit around which Isobel Lennart’s Funny Girl book is haplessly wound, propelled both Brice’s psychological journey as well as Barbara Streisand’s more untainted trek to the lights of Broadway. A recklessly aphoristic chapter of showbiz lore, Funny Girl never decidedly resolved itself to a clear narrative track. The original 1964 production, buoyed in part by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s iconic score (“People”, “Don’t Rain on My Parade”) promptly became an unrivaled- and inevitably unmounted- star vehicle for the then-unknown Streisand.
But William Osetek and Gary Griffin were willing- and ready- to test these often enervating odds. Befitting Drury Lane’s recent track record of whiz-bang musical productions, Funny Girl bestows the unassuming suburban venue with a nourishing brush of artistic risk. Juxtaposed with the film’s equitable take on Brice’s life on and off the Ziegfeld stage, this new biographical rendering shifts its focus to the performer’s precarious psyche, with Osetek and Griffin adroitly behind the lens.
Indeed, the tempestuous rise of both Brice’s vaudevillian turn and molten wedlock give warrant to this retraction. Resolute on achieving a male partner as dotingly veracious as her audiences, Brice encapsulates a character defined by want, struggle, and an inevitable void. Osetek and Griffin largely transport the text away from the bedazzled hems on Ziegfeld’s chorus girls and sparkling marquees in exchange for the more desperate backstage view. Seeped in wooden browns, Jack Magaw’s set provides an almost hermitic playing space into which the audience may peer. Brice’s tragic propensity for self-penance perches rightfully on display in Drury Lane’s latest endeavoring.
Paired with Osetek’s subtly inquisitive direction, Sara Sheperd’s Fanny is a cerebral, empathetic creature. Sheperd uses her Legally Blonde-trained schtick when scenically warranted, yet proffers an arrestingly humane interpretation of Brice’s ill-fated frays with intimacy when segregated. In contrast to her bravura vocals, Sheperd allows her audience to marinate silently with Fanny’s demons when permitted by the text. Often left alone onstage gazing into an invisible vanity, Sheperd parlays a nuanced sense of isolation to her captive onlookers, allowing the audience to sit with Fanny through her ultimate desolation. That isn’t to say that this Funny Girl turns a blind eye to its comedic source, but rather it pairs this sense of aw-shucks whimsy with a more muted intonation. The results, as helmed by Sheperd, are often harrowing to observe.
Yet the supporting cast does not seem on board for an excursion of similar verisimilitude. Paul Anthony Stewart’s Nicky Arnstein, the worldly conman for whom Brice sacrifices her self-efficacy, serves more caricature than human. Stewart rarely allows Arnstein to delve into the realm of masculine vulnerability, instead imbuing the sweet-tongued gambler with a derivative mien of charming immodesty.
In the same vein, Sheperd’s Ziegfeld-wrenched flapper paeans lack delegated support. Dampened in number and ebullience, Osetek and Griffin’s ensemble bits lack the garish opulence of the original stage follies. The numbers exhibit a paucity of the canned indulgence and blinding aesthetic that become synonymous with Ziegfeld’s productions. As a result, Fanny’s onstage marvels and dressing room confessions do not develop a wholly antithetical relationship to one another. Sheperd often appears as deserted in the sweating limelight as she does in front of her dressing room mirror.
Yet ultimately the production’s fearlessness in intrapersonal inspection eclipses its setbacks. It’s an unwaivering case study of the relationship between the conceits of both public and private performance, and the position that each assume in one’s quest for identity. For the first time, Fanny Brice may have found her appropriate spotlight.
“Funny Girl” runs through March 7, 2010 at Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook Terrace. For tickets or more information please visit www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
