What does “Funny Girl” feel like in the 21st century? Even when the show premiered in the 1960s, people associated it more with its star, Barbra Streisand, than Fanny Brice, the real-life stage and radio superstar who it is actually about. Playing at The Bushnell through Sunday, “Funny Girl” is constrained by some old-world values and old Broadway tropes, but the impetuous spirit of Brice and some of the most stirring showtunes of the ’60s shine through. Brice was associated with some true pop standards, including “My Man” and “Secondhand Rose,” but “Funny Girl” is not a jukebox musical and those songs are not in it.
Instead, composer Jule Styne and lyricist Bob Merrill created their own classics: “People,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “Who Are You Now?” and “What Do Happy People Do?” The show fixates on Brice’s time with her second husband Nicky Arnstein, to the extent that it acts as if she never had a first husband. (Her third husband, Connecticut island-owning songwriter/producer Billy Rose, was the subject of Streisand’s movie sequel to “Funny Girl” called “Funny Lady.”) Arnstein was a high-rolling gambler and con man.
“Funny Girl” lightens his most illegal activities to make it seem like his main problem is a stubborn chauvinist insistence on making his own money and making his own decisions so as not to be branded “Mr. Brice.” The show also gives the impression that Brice was the one key star of the Ziegfeld Fol.
