Funny Girl National Tour LA stop

Went to the first night of the tour at the Ahmanson. Nice to be in a packed theater. The tour is good. The physical production looks more elegant without the circular mirrored turntable wall ( or whatever that was). Katerina has a gorgeous voice. It brings to mind Eydie Gorme. At last nights performance she was perhaps just a tad to slick in the role. She was delivering a great Fanny but you could tell she was going from point A to B. What a treat to see Melissa Manchester. She is very good in the role. Glad they got rid of the shtick in the curtain call . Getting raves in the local papers. Worth checking out.

Also.. there was a very small pro Palestine protest that worked itself to the front of the theater in the plaza about one hour before the show.. I don't know what security did.. but it was taken care off very quickly. .. Interesting times we are in. So nice to get lost in an old school musical for a few hours.

Updated On: 4/4/24 at 10:23 PM

I got tickets going June 1st in Costa Mesa. I’m crossing my fingers I’ll enjoy it as well.

Am I the only one partial to the Broadway set? I haven’t and won’t get to see the tour unfortunately but I absolutely loved the spiral staircases and spinning wall sections on the turntable. Tired of seeing just …. turntables these days and I appreciated that this was such a new take on it that did more than just move actors. The wireframe, gritty and worn feel of the stairs, portals, walls and larger set structure was really pretty and did a lot of thematic heavywork in my eyes while also being really functional and dynamic. I remember the scene transitions flowing very naturally.

The tour set by comparison looks incredibly scaled down and empty in the footage my eyes have stumbled across. But again I haven’t seen it. I’m just really surprised folks seem to be bigger fans.

I saw the tour twice about a month ago. Caught Katerina and the understudy who does Thursdays.

I saw all three Fannys on Broadway, and I thought Katerina bested them all. Lea played the arc of the evening and framing device the best of all three (now five), but Katerina landed each moment so well. She has a voice to die for. She's funny. Found she handled the tonal change into melodrama decently in Act Two. Really couldn't have been happier with her.

The production is on the cheap side. The lighting is better, the brick silo seemed such a challenge to light on Broadway. But the production is now a series of drops with the cast moving all physical scenic elements on and off. The drop for the Arnstein/Brice manse in Act Two looks like it was made for a production of The Sound of Music. The outside image on that drop is identical to the Sound of Music movie set. Some of the physical set pieces are also comically small. There is no way that piano had any more than 36 keys.

Manchester is good. I think the Nick on tour acts it much better than Ramin Karimloo.

Physical production is something of a let down but it's imo unmissable for the performances.

Thanks for the reviews! Hoping to see it when it comes to the Kennedy Center. Still deciding if I want to see Birdie too.

I will echo all of this praise. Easily the best performance I’ve seen on tour (caught this in Cleveland, where she got people standing mid-show on a TUESDAY). That voice!