Posted: 5/17/08 at 12:22pm
Just some of the reviews for 'Funny Girl' at Chichester Festival Theatre. All reviews have been 100% positive and the arrival of this little big show in the West End cant be far off!
The Observer
*****
The Chichester summer season has burst into life with Angus Jackson's stripped down, small scale, wiry and vivacious 'Funny Girl'. Jule Styne and Bob Merrills musical containsone of the most emetic off songs 'People Who Need People'. Yet its a non-gooey show. The heroine made famous by Streisand is not just a funny shape (her 'incidentals are no bigger than two lentils'), she's really bossy and ends up without a bloke. and she's perfectly reincarnated by Samantha Spiro. Made to look weird by surrounding her by the most willow limbed , pencil featured hoofers ever seen outside an Erte drawing, Spiro is tiny and light as a glove puppet, but has the belting voice and fierceness of Edith Piaf.
This show has 'the pip with pizazz'!
The Evening Standard
****
After a splendid season last year, the resurgent Chichester Festival Theatre opens for business once more with a compelling revival.
'Funny Girl' is , of course, best known in its Barbra Striesand film version but before this it was a long running Broadway hit with big tunes, snappy lyrics,high kicks and solid gold subject matter, namely that old business they call show.
The titular funny girl is American comic actress Fanny Brice (Samantha Spiro) who, according to Isobel Lennart's ridiculously simplistic book, came from a humble (ragged clothes) but warm (jolly chit chat) background craved success and very quickly got it , via a starring role in the world famous Ziegfeld Follies. If this were all, we'd certainly question weather the show must go on, but what gives Jule Styne and Bob Merrill's piece such heft is Fanny's disastrous but all too understandable love for dashing chancer Nick Arnstein (Mark Umbers).
In he walks, this tuxedo-ed Adonis and Fanny, hard working and plain, decides to throw everything up for a dicey gamble on hitherto elusive personal happiness. 'Don't Rain On My Parade', she pleads in one of the evenings most powerful numbers. From here, both Spiro's performance and Angus Jackson's production, which is confident enough to let the emotion percolate through some well judged pauses , reach thrilling new levels! The second half, considerably shorter than the too lengthy first, packs an almighty punch and the scene between Nick and Fanny is almost unbearably moving.
Spiro, who's vocal strength increases in tandem with fanny's heartache, gives a real depth and resonance to her feelings, and the melifluous Umbers supplies the cad with ample charm. Stephen Mear's choreography for the ever circling chorus girls is delightful.
It looks fair set to be another sizzling summer on the south coast.
Updated On: 5/17/08 at 12:22 PM
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