The Difficulty Of Casting “Funny Girl”
“Funny Girl” was on TCM yesterday. Every time I watched a snippet of it, I marveled at the exactitude of Streisand’s comic timing: she nailed those jokes. Every time I watched it, I also sighed at the difficulty that director Bartlett Sher has in trying to cast a Fanny in the big new revival of the show that starts this winter in L.A. and, if all goes well, will travel to Broadway. The only path that makes any sense is to find an unknown, whose path to stardom would parallel Brice’s rags-to-riches story in the show. (An ongoing debate about the casting can be found at the New York Times site.) Meanwhile, Marilyn Michaels, known for her impersonations of Streisand and other stars, has weighed in on the casting challenge.
