MikeInTheDistrict said: "bwayphreak234 said: "I posted this a while ago, but the fact that an entire creative team and team of producers green-lighted her casting and continued with her after having presumably heard her sing and act during workshops and rehearsals is just baffling to me. The fact that she made it this far into the production process is just mind boggling to me and always will be. This entire thing is a fiasco that could have, and SHOULD have, been avoided. It's been glaringly obvious that she was never right for this role."
This is what confounds me about this situation. In the Daily Beast article, the source kept repeating "We should have fired her in previews" or "We should have fired her immediately after the reviews came out." But how did this production even get as far as previews (or even full rehearsals) with Beanie in this role?? Once they heard her sing (which has pretty much been as expected, based on her previous work), it should have been obvious she was miscast.
It makes me seriously question Michael Mayer and the whole creative and musical team if they were in any way surprised by audience and critical response. Can they not differentiate good singing from poor singing? Were they so naive or stupid to think that Beanie would NOT be compared to the golden standard Barbra set, or that singing ability would not be a primary concern for anyone following in her footsteps? The marketing team's tact has been to try to convince us that comedic or acting ability would be enough to override any deficiencies in singing ability, but anyone who is familiar with this show and with any shred of creative intelligence should have been able to foresee that was not the case.
The only explanation I can think of is that their hands were tied, for whatever reason. How much Beanie's family connections contributed to her being in this production is unclear, but she has been central to the publicity around this production from the very beginning. Even the art prominently features her face. They unwisely built the marketing and media of this production around Beanie specifically so that, by the time rehearsals (and certainly previews) were underway, it would have looked really bad to let her go and start over with someone else.
It's all just been sheer idiocy and incompetence."
It seemed obvious to me at the time (previews/opening) and seems confirmed by the article now that the producers intentionally went with someone who didn't have a big voice. I had thought that was to put the emphasis on the "funny" part of Funny Girl and also to distance whoever was cast from suffering a direct Streisand comparison (yeah, it didn't work out that way). I got the impression from comments here that in London, Sheridan Smith was similarly a limited vocalist cast to give a strong comedic performance. The article makes it sound like a further issue was Beanie being viewed as an emerging star in movies and t.v., thus giving further incentive to casting a performer with a limited range, if in fact she was expected to be a big tourist draw.
It's also worth pointing out that, contrary to the haters, nothing suggests she was incompetent. There was a genuine divide here between people who thought her vocals were fine, or she was capable of handling them with a little more practice, and those who thought she was simply abysmal. You don't get such disparate responses if your star is a total failure. It's interesting now that Funny Girl is classified as a disaster that Beanie's being completely slammed while, conversely, now that Company is looked at as a landmark revival, Katrina Lenk is being hailed for pulling off a role many strongly insisted she didn't have the voice for.
Now that all is said and done, I think Beanie should have been replaced in previews. When I saw a number of people championing her, I began to think we naysayers (and I was one of them) had gotten it wrong, and she could handle the part, or at least might grow into it (again, the comparison with Lenk is telling). But all that happened was a young woman with talent and a developing career was forced into a humiliating situation and left to flail while dissent mounted and word of mouth became toxic.
Really, really terrible producing, but also clearly terrible directing, as Mayer seems to have had, from back with the London production, ideas about what Funny Girl and for casting the show that just aren't at all consistent with what an audience wants from it.
I hate the venom directed at Beanie, but that doesn't mean keeping her in the role was a wise choice. Ultimately, it wasn't even a kind one.
