Manchester in ‘Funny Girl’ is the Essential Jewish Mother
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Manchester in ‘Funny Girl’ is the Essential Jewish Mother

The popular singer plays Fanny Brice’s mother in this Broadway musical at the Fox Theatre.

Melissa Manchester (left) is Fanny Brice’s mother, pictured with Katerina McCrimmon as Fanny.
Melissa Manchester (left) is Fanny Brice’s mother, pictured with Katerina McCrimmon as Fanny.

It has taken 60 years for “Funny Girl” to reach the stage of the Fox Theatre. The 1964 Broadway musical and the 1968 movie version launched Barbra Streisand so firmly into the stratosphere of show business stardom that many thought a production without her would never succeed.

In the original. Streisand dominated almost every moment of the show as Fanny Brice, the brilliant Jewish American comedienne who rises from the immigrant community of the Lower East Side to star in the “Ziegfeld Follies” in the first decades of the 20th century. The original producer, Ray Stark, was Fanny Brice’s son-in-law, who was careful to guard Brice reputation in this loosely adapted version of her early career.

Melissa Manchester was a teenager when she saw Streisand in that original run. Now, Manchester, a winner who has enjoyed a long and successful singing career, is back as Rose Brice, Fanny’s mother, in the production in Atlanta. Manchester, who saw Streisand’s original performance, remembers it vividly

Grammy Award winner Melissa Manchester celebrates her 50th anniversary in show business.

“I was a very young girl, and she was spectacular, but it was a very different show. This show has been reworked. The book has been reworked by Harvey Fierstein. And so, it’s much richer. The characters are more fleshed out. All of the principal characters travel their own journey, and it’s quite a rich feeling.”

Rose Brice, in a sense, represents the rich milieu of the Jewish immigrant life into which her daughter is born. The 2½ million Jewish immigrants who flooded into America from 1880 to the mid-1920s created an environment that unleashed a tidal wave of creativity in American music and popular culture. Manchester gets featured performer status in the show’s credits and she on stage frequently during the production. That’s a sharp contrast to her fleeting presence in the 1968 film version of the show that is most familiar.

Mama Brice and her Jewish friends, who introduce us to her young, talented and irrepressible daughter, trade wisecracks across what would have been in another time and place a mahjong table. Here, they play cards and kibbitz in Rose’s saloon. In real life, Rose raised Fanny after her marriage mostly fell apart. She is introduced early in this production as the quintessential Jewish mother, played by Manchester, who grew up in a traditional Jewish family.

“Rose Brice was strong and successful,” Manchester emphasizes, “and the thing that is particularly touching is that when you are a mother and a grandmother, as I am, when you have kids and there’s one such as Fanny who has such a gift, you love her differently. You don’t love her more than your other children, but you love her differently because she requires a different kind of care along her journey. And that’s really displayed beautifully in ‘Funny Girl.’”

The producers of this new staging of “Funny Girl” have worked hard to establish a contemporary identity for the show. Both the film and stage versions that Streisand made her own during the 1960s have been so firmly fixed in the public mind it has defied repeated attempts to create a production with anyone else.

It was not until 2022 that a revival, with some reworking of Isobel Lennart’s original book, was attempted. Even then, the show had a shaky start, and only took off after the original star, Beanie Feldstein, was replaced by Lea Michele, who went on to play the role for a year and record the original cast recording.

It has been 60 years since “Funny Girl” first appeared on Broadway starring Barbra Streisand.

“I am thrilled and filled with gratitude for this beautiful work, this gorgeous score composed by Jule Styne with beautiful words by Bob Merrill. It’s thrilling for audiences to hear these songs that have become part of the American songbook. Audiences get to experience them within a larger context which is ‘Funny Girl.’ It’s so thrilling because you can feel how it jumps out toward the audience.”

That’s despite the fact that the star of a show so strongly rooted in the New York Jewish tradition is Katerina McCrimmon. She is, unlike Streisand, neither Jewish nor a New Yorker but she puts her own energetic stamp on this show. She may not be Streisand in the unique way she dominates the stage, but the opening night crowd gave her an enthusiastic standing ovation for her strong, dramatic performance.

Still, Manchester believes in the essential environment that is reflected in the production. As.much as anyone, though, it is Manchester who brings to life the essential environment of the immigrant past that is so much a part of the production. And she glories in a role that reflects so much of her own accomplishments as a Jewish woman.

“I’m in in the 50th year of my career. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate that milestone. And I’ve brought all of my life’s experience as a working woman and as a mother, to this character, Rose Brice. I think being Jewish is a specific space. An emotional space that brings some grit and verve and joy and excitement and delight into life.”

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