Although it may be an excellent automobile, “Humorous Lady” has not often been an excellent journey. Even its first-rate Jule Styne songs — “I’m the Biggest Star,” “Individuals” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” amongst them — are problematic. Not solely are the lyrics, by Bob Merrill, typically inane (“I’ll gentle up like a lightweight”?) however the problem of the vocal writing that made Barbra Streisand a star in 1964 makes casting anybody else now a nightmare.
And let’s not get began on the guide, by Isobel Lennart, which in telling the (largely fictional) story of the early-Twentieth-century comedian Fanny Brice, and her disastrous love affair with the gambler Nick Arnstein, appears to have been assembled from a warehouse of used musical-comedy elements. They don’t work nicely collectively, nonetheless nicely they work individually.
The revival that opened in April on the August Wilson Theater — its first on Broadway — solely made issues worse. Harvey Fierstein’s meddling with the complicated guide confused it additional by giving Nick (Ramin Karimloo) extra to do; no person cares what Nick does. And Fanny, whom we do care about, was simply an excessive amount of of a attain for Beanie Feldstein, providing a nice efficiency in a task that shouldn’t be. “With no stupendous Fanny to thrill and distract,” I wrote on the time, “the musical’s manifold faults turn into painfully evident.”
Lea Michele, who took over the function on Sept. 6, seems to be that stupendous Fanny. Sure, she even lights up like a lightweight. Each weak and invulnerable, kooky and ardent, she makes the present price watching once more.
She will be able to’t make it good, although. Michael Mayer’s manufacturing continues to be garish and pushy, pandering for viewers overreaction. A confetti cannon tries to place an exclamation level on a dud dance. Lots of the minor gamers overplay. The lighting by Kevin Adams would make a rat clap, and the unusually ugly set by David Zinn appears weaponized towards intimacy. It appears to be like like a missile silo.
However no less than “Humorous Lady” now has a missile: a performer who from her first phrases (“Howdy, Attractive”) shoots straight to her goal and hits it.
It has been a tortuous path to this clearly proper and seemingly predestined casting, with a long time of false begins involving Lauren Ambrose, Debbie Gibson, Sheridan Smith and others. Feldstein was simply one other within the lengthy listing of misfires; after she ditched the present in a cloud of obvious acrimony — a cloud everybody denied — her standby, Julie Benko, took over.
Benko, who continues to be the Thursday evening Fanny, sings the function very nicely, so that you by no means fear, as you probably did with Feldstein, that she won’t make it by the songs. Then too, Benko will get nearer to the darkish coronary heart of the comedy, backfilling its shtick with one thing like anger. Nonetheless, good as she is, her voice and the remainder of her efficiency don’t but match; she even has a unique accent when appearing the function than when singing it.
Michele matches all through. Her voice, an distinctive instrument, just isn’t an decoration however a instrument, and she or he is aware of use it. That in itself is not any shock; she appears to have been making an attempt out for the function since 2009. Over the course of her six seasons as Rachel Berry on “Glee,” she sang most of Fanny’s numbers with exceedingly excessive polish, if typically a robust whiff of Streisand karaoke. (Rachel’s center title was Barbra.)
Onstage, although, the Barbraisms are much less in proof. Just a few are unavoidable, Streisand having in essence rewritten, and improved, a few of Styne’s vocal traces. And usually, anybody hoping to make a hit of “Humorous Lady” has to comply with the originator’s template, as a result of it was created for her — you would possibly nearly say “on” her, like a couture robe. The songs work (and the scenes practically do) when a performer can entry a manic desperation to succeed, not caring how she comes off or what she loses within the course of. Let’s simply say that Michele, like her idol, has that entry.
What shocked me in “Humorous Lady” is that she will additionally entry rather more. You needn’t perceive the main points of vocal placement to grasp {that a} performer capable of belt all of “Individuals” with out worrying about switching registers has loads of bandwidth left over to fret about extra vital issues. When Michele sings the tune, it’s not a bald assertion however a real inquiry: Can Fanny achieve success in each love, which implies so much to her, and work, which implies extra?
And on the finish, when life has delivered its sad reply, Michele isn’t enjoying at disappointment. A scorching mess of tears, she takes her time recovering sufficiently to maneuver into the finale, a reprise of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” It’s a mark of her shaping of the function that she sings it fairly otherwise than she did on the finish of Act I, when Fanny is reaching outward to seize the life she desires. Now she’s reaching inward to rescue herself from emotional catastrophe — some extent Michele makes with typical vocal daredevilry within the tune’s remaining heart-stopping phrase.
Sadly, it’s possible you’ll not hear it. Regardless of the amped-up vocals, the amped-up viewers is commonly even louder than Michele. (On Tuesday, one in every of her a number of mid-show standing ovations was really mid-song.) You possibly can’t blame followers for his or her pleasure, and no less than there’s one thing price being enthusiastic about right here. But it surely appears to me that the manufacturing is reaping the doubtful reward of its fixed goading and prodding. You possibly can see Michele having to calculate on the fly how and when to renew, or whether or not to blast proper by, unheeded.
In a method, she’s nearly too critical for the present; comedy, at any fee, isn’t her (or its) greatest go well with. That’s an issue when the title is “Humorous Lady.” Nonetheless, when Michele is given a very good state of affairs to play, as when Nick seduces her in a restaurant, she will get good laughs. Different instances, as in an embarrassing in-joke added post-Feldstein, coyly referring to a tune sung on curler skates within the 1968 film, she appears to be like misplaced, even because the viewers yuks on cue.
I hope she’ll preserve burrowing into the function and never give in to the overall hysteria. She actually has allies in that combat: Karimloo, particularly because the damaged man Nick turns into on the finish, does some pretty, quiet work, and Tovah Feldshuh, having changed the zany Jane Lynch as Fanny’s mom, is so gritty and salty she may flip ice into slush. Within the smaller function of Florenz Ziegfeld, Peter Francis James stays a mannequin of dignified restraint.
Charismatic performers make the factor they’re performing disappear. In impact, they exchange it; their voice turns into its voice, their pores and skin its story. That Michele makes “Humorous Lady” appear higher than we all know it to be is the fantastic however presumably irreproducible product of the mutual want between an old school expertise on the way in which up and an old school musical on the way in which down. It’s a necessity like that of lovers, and you recognize what the tune says about them: Regardless of all proof, they’re the luckiest individuals on this planet.
Humorous Lady
On the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; funnygirlonbroadway.com. Working time: 2 hours 50 minutes.