The national touring production of “Funny Girl,” currently at the Ahmanson, is a must-see for fans of the film, old musicals and old Hollywood. The stage musical and the movie “Funny Girl” are both fairytales, an example of the tragedy of a talented woman overshadowing her man, and thus losing him. That Fanny, her kids and even her ex-husband Nick (as well as the original Broadway star Barbra Streisand) all ended up in Los Angeles makes it a local story, part Hollywood fantasy and part Hollywood success story.

Of course, fans of musicals and Barbra Streisand already know that the musical “Funny Girl” (score by June Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill with book by Isobel Lennart) opened on Broadway in 1964 with Streisand in the lead role and Brice’s son-in-law Ray Stark producing.

If you’ve only seen the film “Funny Girl,” you really don’t know the 1964 stage musical at all. The original musical, starring Barbra Streisand, was nominated for eight Tony Awards and the original cast recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004. Streisand was nominated for a Tony, but lost to Carol Channing (“Hello, Dolly!”). The film, however, garnered Streisand an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

This revival opened 24 April 2022 on Broadway with Beanie Feldstein as Brice and Lea Michele taking over the lead role that September. The tour features Katerina McCrimmon who certainly has the big voice and comedic timing for the role. Her Nick is the tall Stephen Mark Lukas.

If you’re a Streisand fan, you’ll want to see this to imagine what it was like for a young and relatively unknown Streisand on Broadway under the supervision of Jerome Robbins and direction of Garson Kanin. If you just love big voices, and traditional musicals with tap dancing (choreography by Ayodele Casel and choreography by Ellenore Scott) and gorgeous gowns (costume design by Susan Hilferty and hair design by Campbell Young Associates), you’ll love this as well. McCrimmon has a gorgeous voice and gets to wear equally gorgeous gowns. Fans of Grammy Award-winning Manchester will get to see her sing and soar as the justifiably worried mother. As we all know, Nick wasn’t the right man for Fanny. All is under the deft direction of Michael Mayer.

The original Broadway version has been adapted to reflect the film (revised book by Harvey Fierstein). Instead of starting with Fanny Brice getting her first vaudeville job, it begins in the present with Brice already a star of the Ziegfeld Follies. Backstage at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City 1924, she’s waiting to hear about her husband, Nick Arnstein who is being released from prison (“Who Are You Now?”). The musical then takes us into an extended flashback until we come to this moment backstage. She reminisces about her early life, when her mother, Mrs. Brice (Melissa Manchester)  and her mother’s friends Mrs. Starkosh (Eileen T’Kaye) and Mrs. Meeker (Cindy Chang) ask her to be realistic, show business isn’t for women who look like her (“If a Girl Isn’t Pretty”).

Fanny will be discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld, but she’ll also show Ziegfeld that she has an idea or two (“His Love Makes Me Beautiful”) that will help make his shows a success. Nick will meet her while she on tour and seduce her (You Are Woman, I Am Man”), but after a major financial loss, he’ll decide to travel to Europe. Fanny decides to lea the tour early so she can go with him (“Don’t Rain on My Parade”) and when he wins, they marry (“Sadie, Sadie”). For a while, they’ll be happy. Until she returns to work and her growing success will keep the family afloat but make Nick desperate to be the breadwinner.

McCrimmon might have to contend with the memories of Streisand’s cinematic Fanny Brice, which she does by making it her own while still paying tribute to Brice. Lukas looks nothing like the film’s Nicky (Omar Shariff) and more like the actual man. He’s tall and suave. Walter Coppage’s Florenz Ziegfeld has the ring of authority. By the end, you wish that McCrimmon’s Fanny paid more attention to Izaiah Montague Harris’ Eddie Ryan, Fanny’s friend who wistfully wants to be more before Nick comes on the scene.

You’ll hear more songs in this stage musical presentation than were featured in the 1968 film, “Funny Girl,” and there are some songs you won’t hear, notably “Second Hand Rose,” “My Man” and “I’d Rather Be Blue Over You (Than Happy With Somebody Else).” “I’d Rather Be Blue” by Fred Fisher and Billy Rose,  “My Man” with music by Maurice Yvain (lyrics by Channing Pollock) and “Second Hand Rose”with music by James F. Hanley and lyrics by Grant Clarke are from the 1928 Warner Bros. musical, “My Man,” which starred Fanny Brice. Currently, I can’t find any place to stream “My Man.”

Seven numbers from the musical were not included in the film production while “Rollerskate Rag,” “The Swan” and “Funny Girl” were added, composed specifically for Streisand. “Funny Girl” is included in the revival. “Rollerskate Rag” and “The Swan” are not and neither are the associated scenes.

Ultimately, “Funny Girl,” movie and stage musical, is a Hollywood story. Sure, it starts in Brooklyn, but the main character, Fanny Brice, died in Hollywood (1951). The man she falls in and out of love with, Julius “Nicky” Arnstein also died in Los Angeles (1965), although they had been divorced since 1927. Their daughter, Frances (b. 1919), married producer Ray Stark in 1939 and both she and her husband died in Los Angeles (1992 and 2004). Brice and Arnstein’s son, William Arnstein, professionally known as William Brice, first taught at the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles (1948-1952) and then at UCLA (1953-1991) and died in California (2008).

The WilliamBrice.org website, gives a scathing account of his father under Nick and Criminality.

Nick’s vocation was not “professional gambler”, who followed the elegant and romantic racetrack crowd around the country, as he had intimated to Fanny in 1912 when they first met. That was a con job.

He was a sophisticated confidence man, who sailed on elegant ocean liners to bilk wealthy, grey-haired widows and naive debutantes out of their money. In fact, Nick had been arrested for swindling in London, Paris, and Monte Carlo between 1909 and 1912, but was never imprisoned. Fanny, normally clear-eyed and streetwise, was too crazy about this elegant man to see the con. They moved in together—without Nick letting her know that he was still married to his estranged wife. Another con.

Then in 1915 while living with Fanny, Arnstein was charged with using an illegal wiretap as part of a scheme to swindle stocks and was sentenced to fourteen months in Sing Sing. Fanny visited him in prison—and so did Nick’s wife although Nick kept Fanny unaware. Yet, another con.

By 1918, though, Nick’s wife finally agreed to divorce Nick, and in October of that year, he and Fanny were legally wed.

Nick Arnstein was not a particularly affectionate father, either.

Despite Nick’s subsequent marriage in 1932 to a Pasadena heiress and his son’s eventual relocation to Los Angeles, just a forty-minute drive door to door between father and son, Nick only bothered to see Brice three more times before his death in 1965.

In both the film and the current stage musical, “Funny Girl” is more fantasy than truth, the story of a woman who becomes too successful for her husband to bear and that is what tragically breaks them apart. Fanny Brice’s first marriage to Frank White (1910-1913) is totally ignored. Yet both end with Brice determined to be a star and continue on despite the heartbreak. That’s a better lesson for women and girls than “Annie Get Your Gun.”

Comparing the stage musical and the film makes for an interesting study on movie musicals. If you’re interested in what the real Fanny Brice was like, there are two readily available films: “Be Yourself” and “Ziegfeld Follies.” The former streams free. The latter can be rented on Amazon Prime Video. There is, however, there’s a lot of baggage in the latter.

“Funny Girl” runs until 28 April 2024 at the Ahmanson. For tickets or more information, visit CenterGroupTheatre. The national tour continues with its next stop in San Francisco. Then it returns to Southern California for performances in Costa Mesa.