NEW YORK, NY.- A Broadway revival of Funny Girl that was battered and boosted by offstage drama will finish its roller-coaster ride over Labor Day weekend, the shows producers announced Thursday.
The production the first revival of a musical long deemed unrevivable because of the long shadow of its original star, Barbra Streisand has been among Broadways bestselling shows ever since Lea Michele, of Glee fame and then flak, stepped into the title role.
Michele, whose cant-miss voice and cant-turn-away comeback story have turned her tenure into the talk of the town, will have spent a year in the role: Her first performance was Sept. 6, 2022, and her final performance will be Sept. 3, 2023. She replaced Beanie Feldstein, whose comedic chops, according to critics, were not matched by the vocal range required for the role.
Michele has essentially single-handedly reversed the shows fortunes, which had been flagging until she joined the cast. The shows grosses more than doubled when she stepped into the role and plunge whenever she is out. (Last week, when she and her co-star, Ramin Karimloo, were on vacation, the shows grosses dropped by a staggering $950,000, to 50% of what they had been the previous week.)
Critics have gushed. In The New York Times, Jesse Green described Michele as a missile: a performer who from her first words (Hello, Gorgeous) shoots straight to her target and hits it. In the Los Angeles Times, Charles McNulty wrote, Lea Michele is delivering a tour de force for the ages.
Her run in the show has been all the more compelling because of its backstory: On Glee, Michele played a character who idolizes Streisand, sings songs from Funny Girl and then lands the starring role in a fictional revival. Michele, in a life-imitates-art sense, seemed destined to take on the role on Broadway, particularly since the real-world revival was being directed by Michael Mayer, who played a significant role in Micheles career by casting her in her breakout role, in Spring Awakening, when she was still a teenager. But by the time the Funny Girl revival rolled around, Michele had been denounced on social media after being accused of behaving poorly toward her television castmates, and the production turned instead to Feldstein, a well-liked star of Booksmart.
The Funny Girl revival opened in April, but critics were generally underwhelmed by Feldsteins performance, and sales had begun to droop by summer. Thats when Feldstein left and Michele arrived, creating a high-stakes spectacle for a show in need of a jolt and an actress in need of a new narrative. This was a make-or-break moment for Micheles career, McNulty wrote.
Micheles performance has thrilled audiences, and once she arrived, the show recorded a cast album. She has tirelessly promoted the show, dancing at the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, kvelling over a letter from Streisand on Late Night With Seth Meyers, and playing charades with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. In interviews, she has deployed a combination of charm, contrition and humility.
The producing team, led by Sonia Friedman, offered no explanation for the decision to close, and a spokesperson had no comment. But it has been widely expected within the industry that once Micheles tenure was over, the show would end its run. That is not particularly unusual for star-driven musical revivals: Funny Girl will have outlasted the recent revival of The Music Man, for example, which ran for 13 months and closed with the departures of its big draws, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.
The shows four lead performers Michele, Karimloo, Jared Grimes and Tovah Feldshuh have all agreed to stay through Sept. 3, the producers said. But Karimloo will take a leave from June 27 through July 17 to star in a production of The Phantom of the Opera in Italy.
It remains unclear whether the Funny Girl revival will recoup its $16.5 million capitalization, and a spokesperson also had no comment on that. But the show has been selling strongly grossing between $1.8 million and $2 million per week through January and February, which are soft months for Broadway and the closing announcement could boost sales further. (The show has also had the highest average ticket price on Broadway: $204.55 during the week that ended Feb. 19.)
The producers said that they plan a North American tour that will begin in September, the same month as the Broadway closing, starting in Providence, Rhode Island. The tour casting has not been announced.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.