Commonweal Magazine FUNNY GIRL Review
April 24, 1964

THERE IS nothing more obnoxious about our theater than the star system, with its glorification of emptinesses, but if Barbra Streisand has to be thought of from now on as a star, I suppose there is no help for it. There is after all no point m insisting that she is no( a star, even though the itch is great to find some way of distinguishing her from Sandy Dennis, Elizabeth Ashley and Jane Fonda. Well, whatever they are, Miss Streisand is beyond doubt the most talented all-purpose performer to have emerged in many years, a virtuoso of astonishing range and infinite nuance who wholly deserves every bit of the celebrity that has come to her.

What is so impressive about this twenty-two-year-old girl is the way she unites comedic and musical gifts, her scope in the latter area extending, moreover, from the rockem-sockem to the torchy to the open and sweet. She is a master of timing, a marvelously supple mime, a vastly energetic cavorter through space whenever there is nothing specific to perform. Her presence is that of a veteran twice her age, her physical appearance-huge-nosed, ungainly, a provocation to the DAR—has a capacity for transfiguration into a very rare and subtle beauty, which is that of the intellect and spirit correcting all disproportion.

To insert such richness into the deadly formulas and coerced animation of a musical comedy like "Funny Girl" is a palpable crime, but of course crimes of this kind are coming more and more to pay off on Broadway, the instance before this one being Bert Lahr vs. the inanities of "Foxy." In the case of "Funny Girl" you cannot help being an accessory; if you want Miss Streisand you have to take the rest of the dreary business along with her, you have to find some way of getting through the intervals when she is not on stage. During those times, which, it has to be said, are as infrequent as is consistent with Miss Streisand's physical survival, "Funny Girl" instantly collapses into the most banal and dispiriting of proceedings, unfunny, unmusical, without inspiration of any kind.

The specific trouble with the production (the general trouble has been outlined immediately above} is its refusal to be honest about its subject, which is Fanny Brice, her early life on the stage and her romance with and subsequent marriage to Nicky Arnstein, the notorious gambler. Any sort of biography of Miss Brice which sedulously hides the fact that she was Jewish and that Arnstein was a gangster (he is here a lovable playboy) is going to be in difficulty, but "Funny Girl" stretches the danger. Still, Miss Streisand has such resources that it would take more than Jules Styne and Bob Merrill, who wrote the music and lyrics, and Isobel Lennart, who is responsible for the book, to keep her from exercising her life-saving talents. She may not be able to give us Fanny Brice, but she is eminently capable of giving us herself, and it would be hard to imagine anyone in his right mind and sensibility refusing that. (At the Winter Garden)