Run! To the Minerva, you MUST go!

I loved the 1968 William Wyler Oscar winning adaptation of the 1964 Broadway hit “Funny Girl”, starring the incomparable Barbra Streisand. I loved the concept and I loved the songs and the singing of the leading lady.

Yet here I am in 2008, forty years later, saying get yourself across to the Minerva Theatre in Chichester – Fanny Brice is back in town! Tiny Samantha Spiro (5’2” of dynamite) is wonderful as the eponymous Funny Girl. She takes on the feisty Jewish girl and produces a marvellous heart wrenching but ultimately uplifting performance. Her voice may not match the great diva but she sings the great anthems “Don’t Rain on my Parade”, “People” and “I’m the Greatest Star” with passion and commitment. You believe in this Fanny. She is actually funny in the comedy sequences, she is a triumphant Broadway star in the dance sequences and backstage and she is in love with her incredibly handsome but no-good man. You will not see a better musical theatre performance this year anywhere.

At times this does feel like a one-woman show and Miss Spiro does have to carry most of the emotional weight. A wonderful cast and a chorus line of eight gorgeous dancers with very long ladder length legs are on hand to support her. Rose Brice, her mother, is a wise cracking, wiseacre of a Jewish momma, warmly played by Sheila Steafel. I loved the songs, “Who Taught Her Everything?” and “Find Yourself a Man” but these were especially sold on me by the performance of Sebastien Torka as Eddie. He is Fanny’s longstanding friend, who helps get her launched on her career, and who is the one to caution against Nicky Arnstein, the good looking gambler.

Mark Umbers certainly is a good looking heart throb and he sings well. The Best Beloved fell for him during the evening and none more so in the beautifully recreated restaurant scene. The sophisticated gentleman in the “height of nonchalance, providing beds in restaurants”, woos the feisty, prickly and bad tempered Fanny (“You Are Woman, I am Man”). She is introduced to the delights of posh food and high living but discovers pate is only “chopped liver” after all.

The set is marvellous in a design by Mark Thompson. I particularly liked the way the theatre is stripped back to the bare black walls for the back stage but the white roses for the Long Island mansion, the red ottoman for the restaurant and the same ottoman stripped for the railway station are simply done but most evocative. Special mention must go to Stephen Mear, the choreographer, who produces some marvellous thrilling dance sequences. The musical direction of the unseen band is wonderful by Robert Scott and one has to thank Jason Carr for his orchestrations and his informative notes in the programme. The director, Angus Jackson, doesn’t allow his cast to put a foot wrong. He drives the show through its two and three quarter hour length without making me once conscious of time or haste.
Well done, Jonathan Church and Alan Finch, for another great opening to another great Season at Chichester. The last two seasons have been marvellous and this one promises to be just as good. I would just echo Michael Billington and say Jule Styne’s “Gipsy”, the story of Gipsy Rose Lee and her fearsome mother, Rose, would go down a storm. (I want to do it myself at the Bench if I can find a musical director). Especially if the musical is done in the Minerva – doing a full-scale musical in the smaller auditorium was a masterstroke.
If you are still reading this review, you shouldn’t be here now! You should be phoning up the box office 01243 781312, going online at http://www.cft.org.uk/. You only have until June 14th to join “People (who need people are the luckiest people in the world) and who have seen glorious Sam Spiro as the fearless ugly duckling in this Cinderella meets Prince Charming of a musical delight.