| re: Casting Funny Girl | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 08:55 am EDT 08/20/22 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 08:52 am EDT 08/20/22 | |
| In reply to: Casting Funny Girl - winters 06:03 am EDT 08/20/22 | |
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| When the story is described as "fictional," it doesn't begin to cover what a fantasy it is. Brice was performing and even touring at a young age and married the first time in her teens. The naif in the musical who was seduced by a sophisticated charmer didn't exist. It sounds like nitpicking, but the entire romantic construct is built on this myth of the young woman who apparently never even had a date before. She met Arnstein knowing of his criminality, since she visited him in Sing Sing before their marriage, and they lived together for years. Thus the entire first act bears almost no resemblance to the Brice story. And the second act, the weaker in musical comedy terms, is even more strained mythmaking. The scenes of Fanny's exposed naivete about Nick's corrupt behavior are fabricated, since he was in jail for wiretapping early in their romance. (Okay, apparently she thought him innocent in the Wall Street crime, but it's more complex if he's already a convicted felon; the musical pretends he's never done anything wrong. Which does not make him all that compelling.) All of this would actually make a helluva story, this star who early on made big, bold mistakes. Imagine Fanny dumping the barber she was wed to for three years and running off to Sing Sing, obsessed with a guy unworthy of her? Imagine the gnarly nooks and crannies of *that" Fanny Brice? That's a helluva heroine for a musical, too -- arguably, a woman ahead of her time who didn't let a bad first marriage stop her. In 1913! Women couldn't even vote! I hear the naysayers object, but it would cut through the phoniness in the portrayal of Nick -- unfixed by Fierstein -- who teaches this wide-eyed girl-woman about sex. But could that Brice sing "People"? I can see a case made, though its sentimentality doesn't track with the Brice persona. We don't know if Rose Hovick cold sing "Small World," but we do know that she pushed her kids in ways that make the Laurents fantasy version true enough. It's so emotionally true, who cares? Not true of FG, to my thinking. The FG Brice is so far from the tough woman who could divorce a barber and marry a criminal and stay a star of stage and screen. Seeing the show again in June, I saw the book as a missed opportunity, not something to be fixed with better dialog. If anyone disagrees, well, Exhibit A is on view at the August Wilson. |
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