When Fanny Brice gazes into a mirror at the start of Funny Girl and says “Hello, gorgeous,” is she stating a fact or manufacturing one?
The line has become one of musical theatre’s most quoted, and its durability lies within that ambiguity: it could be the greeting of a woman entirely at ease with herself, or the opening move of someone who has learned that confidence, performed often enough, eventually becomes the real thing. That question — whether Fanny’s self-belief is innate or hard-won — runs beneath the Shaw Festival’s handsome new production, and it is what keeps the show alive long after its Streisand mythology might have crushed it.
The tension between boundless self-belief and the world’s reluctance to confirm it is, of course, the engine of Isobel Lennart’s book for the 1964 musical. But it also speaks to something that has kept Funny Girl alive long after its Barbara Streisand legacy might otherwise have crushed it: this story of a woman refusing to be limited by other people’s expectations remains worth telling.
Now on stage at the Shaw Festival, Funny Girl traces the rise of musical comedy star Fanny Brice (Farb). A Lower East Side girl with outsized talent and unconventional looks, she ascends from the vaudeville circuit to the glittering heights of the Ziegfeld Follies. Along the way, she falls for suave gambler and con man Nick Arnstein (Qasim Khan), and the show tracks their courtship, marriage, and eventual split. These dramatic stakes don’t quite live up to the stronger throughline of the Jule Styne and Bob Merrill score, with “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “People,” and “I’m the Greatest Star” remaining among the most recognizable standards in the musical-theatre canon.
Getting back to Farb, she is the production’s indisputable centre of gravity. A terrific actor, her Fanny is wry, canny, and attuned to irony: a woman who uses her natural comedy as both shield and weapon. What distinguishes Farb’s performance is her restraint: she resists the temptation to push for sympathy, trusting the character’s contradictions to do that work. The Act Two ballads, “Who Are You Now?” and “The Music That Makes Me Dance,” reveal precisely what she excels at: a plaintive, interior quality that lays bare the high cost of the character’s private losses. “People” is also delivered with a conversational intimacy that resists the song’s pull towards a more anthemic delivery.
Her supporting ensemble is strong throughout. Patty Jamieson brings warm, comic vitality to Fanny’s mother Rose Brice, and her scenes alongside Matt Alfano’s Eddie Ryan and Janelle Cooper’s sassy Mrs. Strakosh generate some of the evening’s most pleasurable ensemble moments. Alfano is a particular asset: he is a dancer of real agility and finesse who moves through soft shoe and tap with an ease that looks effortless (but isn’t). Tenor Taurian Teelucksingh’s showcase in the Follies number “His Love Makes Me Beautiful” is a genuine scene-stealer.
Khan’s Nick Arnstein is the production’s most layered male performance, though its strengths lie more in acting than in singing. Khan makes Arnstein’s bravado and hunger for status credible, and his downfall in the second act carries real dramatic weight; but his lighter tenor occasionally struggles to fill the commanding presence the role’s vocal moments require, most notably in “You Are Woman, I Am Man”.
Director Eda Holmes stages the evening with a confidence that is matched by the design. James Lavoie’s sets opt for elegant suggestion: bare bulb-framed mirrors, wrought-iron panels, and pools of light conjure a hazy, bygone era New York. Lighting designer Sonoyo Nishikawa works in close collaboration with Lavoie, and the results are often quietly striking: a faux-mirror effect in the opening sequence, in which time folds in on itself, is one of the evening’s most magical theatrical ideas.
Lavoie’s costumes also do essential narrative work: the modest clothes of Fanny’s Lower East Side youth gradually give way to the eye-popping candy-hued extravagances of her Follies success, charting her trajectory to superstardom. The design is equally attentive elsewhere: Nick moves through the evening in clothing that signals his shifting fortunes: the crisp, self-assured tailoring of Act One giving way to something more frayed at the edges by Act Two. And the Follies dancers are a glorious spectacle in their own right, with extravagant headpieces and tiaras that evoke the gilded excess of the Ziegfeld stage with an almost satirical flair.
Parker Esse’s choreography ranges impressively across the show’s tonal registers: from the scrappy, opportunistic energy of the early vaudeville numbers all the way to Busby Berkeley-scaled Follies spectacle. “Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat” is a particular glittery highlight, showcasing vintage American showbiz glitz and pizzazz
The staging does have its limitations, however. The second act loses some momentum, and while Holmes handles the material competently, she does not find a way to address undercurrents that the book conspicuously blurs. In particular, I would suggest that the show’s treatment of how Fanny’s professional ascent is shadowed by private compromise invites a sharper critical lens.
To be clear, my reservations concern the original writing, more than this staging. Lennart’s book struggles to make the irrepressible Fanny’s private life as compelling as her public one. It is episodic and curiously muted about the very qualities — wit, shrewdness, and a refusal to be managed or contained — that made the real Fanny Brice (born Fania Borach) such a singular figure. The musical focuses on a self-made woman in love, where history gave us something more complicated. Within the existing constraints, Holmes and her cast work admirably, and what they produce is consistently entertaining, frequently moving—and powered by a Farb performance that more than justifies the ticket.
And for audiences encountering Funny Girl for the first time, the most valuable thing this entertaining production offers may just be a spark to curiosity … and a reason to learn more. The life of the real Fanny Brice — the Lower East Side girl, Ziegfeld headliner, radio star, and shrewd self-inventor who died too early — is a richer story than a single musical can contain. This dazzling Shaw Festival production can be your gateway to it.
Funny Girl runs at the Shaw Festival’s Festival Theatre (10 Queen’s Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake) until October 3, 2026. Tickets are available at shawfestival.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
