‘Funny Girl’ at the Shaw Festival is polished and well-acted, if lacking vocal firepower

It’s a byproduct of our robust repertory system, led by the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, where most young performers cut their teeth working on the classics. It’s also borne from the fact that it’s exceedingly difficult to make a living solely as a musical theatre performer in this country. 

This could not be more different from the U.S., where performers basically pop out from the womb belting “Defying Gravity” and waving jazz hands, with the fundamentals of acting merely of secondary or tertiary concern. 

What our Canadian system affords is the opportunity to see great actors tackle classic musical theatre roles. Take Sara Farb, who lends her phenomenal acting chops to the role of Fanny Brice in the Shaw Festival’s new production of “Funny Girl,” now running through the fall at the Festival Theatre. 

Best known for her work on straight plays, though she’s occasionally stepped into the odd musical production (most memorably “Fun Home” in 2018 and “A Little Night Music” a few years before that), Farb may not be the strongest singer.

Her renditions of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s iconic showstoppers — such as “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” — are certainly competent, though they lack the firepower those numbers demand. When she switches between her chest and head voices, there’s a tentativeness in her breath, like moving gears in a gearbox that take a moment to lock in place. It’s a hesitancy that betrays Fanny’s burn-down-the-house, come-hell-or-high-water personality. 

But what Farb lacks vocally is more than made up for by acting that elevates the role to new heights. 

There are three sides to Farb’s Fanny, whose meteoric yet improbable rise from her humble beginnings in New York City to becoming a leading lady with the Ziegfeld Follies was marked by her turbulent, on-and-off relationship with gambler Nicky Arnstein (Qasim Khan). 

In public, Fanny crackles with chutzpah. She’s brash, expressive and rather impish, though also unwittingly awkward, her arms gesticulating wildly when she interacts with others. When she’s with Nicky, however, she retreats into a position of subservience, often wearing a slight scowl on her face. And when she’s alone, those masks are taken off entirely and we come to realize that her public persona is a defence against deep-rooted insecurities. 

Farb easily shifts between Fanny’s public and private spheres. Her line readings, down to the smallest acting choices, not only feel fresh but revelatory. It’s like she’s offering a real-time psychoanalysis of her character, imbued with depth and colour that not even the role’s originator, Barbra Streisand, could tap into. 

It’s a shame that Farb can’t work with better material. The recent Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” featured a revised book by Harvey Fierstein. Unfortunately, that version isn’t available for licensing, so the Shaw Festival is stuck with Isobel Lennart’s 1964 original.

Clocking in at nearly two hours and 45 minutes, Lennart’s book is a slog. Its excess rivals the mountain of suitcases Fanny rolls up with at the Baltimore train station (most of the scenes featuring Fanny’s mother Mrs. Price, played by Patty Jamieson, could be cut entirely). And its plot is so flimsy and thin that it makes some Broadway jukebox biographical musicals look as if they were written by Bernard Shaw.

Director Eda Holmes doesn’t attempt to reinvent the script with some sort of subversive framing device. That’s for the best, given that this outdated book probably can’t be fixed through directorial intervention alone. 

Instead, what Holmes offers is a polished revival that leans into the musical’s strengths and draws out the best performances from this cast. 

As Nicky, Khan delivers a surprisingly sincere, soft-spoken performance, making his downfall in the second act especially pathetic.

In the smaller part of Fanny’s friend and mentor Eddie Ryan, Matt Alfano is a veritable triple-threat performer with magnetic stage presence. (Among this production’s highlights is a tap routine he performs on a suitcase, tumbling under his feet.) Taurian Teelucksingh, with his buttery voice, dazzles as the tenor soloist in the resplendent Follies show number “His Love Makes Me Beautiful.” 

Choreographer Parker Esse’s dance numbers feature performers sliding and tapping across the stage, appropriately hearkening to New York City of the roaring ’20s.

James Lavoie’s costumes clearly distinguish between the glitzy world of the Ziegfeld Follies and that of Fanny’s far more modest upbringing. His sumptuous sets, framed with Vaudevillian drapes and curtains, help to seamlessly move the story between its various locations. Sonoyo Nishikawa’s lighting designs, sometimes consisting only of a tight spotlight on stage, with actors and scenery moving in and out of the shadows, remind us that “Funny Girl” is written as a memory play. 

In the musical’s closing scene, Fanny concludes her trip down memory lane and launches into another reprise of “Don’t Rain On My Parade.”

“Don’t tell me not to live, just sit and putter,” she belts out, a final anthem as she forges ahead with her life, unapologetically. “Life’s candy and the sun’s a ball of butter. Don’t bring around a cloud to rain on my parade.” 

The parade that is this production of “Funny Girl” isn’t all sunshine and roses, but it’s certainly no washout.