Sara Farb performs as Fanny Brice with the Funny Girl ensemble.David Cooper/Supplied
- Title: Funny Girl
- Written by: Jule Styne, Bob Merrill and Isobel Lennart
- Performed by: Sara Farb, Damien Atkins, Qasim Khan, Matt Alfano, Taurian Teelucksingh, Janelle Cooper
- Director: Eda Holmes
- Company: Shaw Festival
- Venue: Festival Theatre
- City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
- Year: Runs until Oct. 3
Hacks‚ HBO Max’s half-hour comedy about an old-school comedienne and her Gen Z head writer, came to a close last week. The show’s final episode was cathartic and weepy, a valentine to women in showbiz (including Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, whose medley of Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again soundtracked the finale’s concluding shots).
If, like me, you’re missing Hacks, you might want to head to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., where the Shaw Festival has produced a glossy Funny Girl worthy of all the divas: Hacks’ Ava Daniels and Deborah Vance, and even Garland and Streisand – the latter of whom, of course, starred in Funny Girl on Broadway and the West End before winning an Oscar for playing real-life Ziegfeld Follies icon Fanny Brice in its 1968 film adaptation.
The production’s not perfect: Eda Holmes’s hands-off direction does little to compensate for Isobel Lennart’s meandering book, which is so episodic that Funny Girl’s emotional through line sporadically dissipates into a fine mist.
The show, as much an exploration of love and relationships as of early musical theatre, follows Fanny through her youthful years as an ugly duckling, checking in on the rising starlet through a series of meet-cutes with mysterious high roller Nicky Arnstein. In each case, Fanny waffles on how to act when things are funny: Should she demur? Or make the joke?
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While the lovers’ budding romance is kinetic and kicky, it’s also decidedly of its early 20th-century era: Even though Lennart’s 1964 book ostensibly critiques the misogyny of the 1910s and twenties, it unwittingly injects the story with a more contemporary kind of sexism, shaving down the real Brice’s accomplishments and reinforcing the notion that the singer’s ambition is what curdled her tenuous marriage to Arnstein.
Indeed, from a 2026 vantage point, Lennart’s version of the rise and fall of the Arnsteins is infuriating and melancholy, which Holmes only occasionally tempers with directorial intervention.
As well, the sound design by Corey MacFadyen and Kaitlyn MacKinnon is surprisingly unflattering to the singers, who at times sound as if they haven’t been amplified at all inside the Shaw’s capacious Festival Theatre.
But the fest’s annual musical features one very funny girl in its leading role: Shaw newcomer Sara Farb, whose Fanny wears a dry-humoured suit of armour around a vulnerable, tender inner life. Acting-wise, Farb’s take on the prima donna is sensitive and nuanced (no thanks to Lennart, whose writing leaves little room for anything but brashness). Musically, too, she’s splendid, appropriately nasal in Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s more conversational songs, but ready with potent belted notes for the showstoppers.
It’s a shame the sound design isn’t there to help out Farb in some of those big numbers. Sometimes she’s forced to compete with the orchestra, conducted with gusto by music director Paul Sportelli, and as such she sounds a touch underpowered, smartly choosing not to yell in order to be heard.
But when Farb does unleash those stirring high notes, watch out. From Don’t Rain on My Parade to The Music That Makes Me Dance, they’re impeccably in tune – not a given in Styne’s score, which has historically seen those songs’ money notes fall flat. Vocally, Farb couldn’t sound more powerful, inflecting her belt with just the slightest edge of contemporary pop.
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Qasim Khan, known for his acting work across Canada but not often cast in musicals, is similarly satisfying to watch as Nick. He finds more depth in the character than exists on the page, offering a bruised, soft-spoken version of one of Broadway’s more mercurial leading men. His songs are introspective and well-sung – a second-act reprise of Don’t Rain on My Parade is one of the production’s more surprising highlights – and when Nick meets his downfall, it’s hard not to feel bad for the con man. (Well, almost.)
Holmes’s supporting cast is just about as strong as her leads: Tenor soloist Taurian Teelucksingh is a standout in His Love Makes Me Beautiful, the larger-than-life production number that starts a career’s worth of rich collaboration between Fanny and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (Damien Atkins, a gem of Canadian theatre and a welcome addition to any cast, makes the most of the hammy role.)
Choreographer Parker Esse further sharpens the production with thoughtful tap numbers. As in all the best tap choreography, Esse’s prescribed moves are impressive to the untrained eye but not insurmountably difficult for the performers who must execute them while singing. Act 2’s Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat is especially fun, a vintage production number stuffed with militaristic dance breaks.
While James Lavoie’s set could make better use of the Festival Theatre’s height, the designer’s bare bulb-framed mirrors (executed in collaboration with lighting designer Sonoyo Nishikawa) and wrought-iron panels elegantly situate Funny Girl in a hazy, antique suggestion of New York. Lavoie’s costumes, meanwhile, feast on a delicious combination of crisp taffetas and luxe headpieces, from stylish hats to bedazzled tiaras.
Though it’s true that Holmes’s Funny Girl could be more biting in its unpacking of Brice’s life and legacy, the Shaw Festival’s production is one of the company’s more beguiling musicals in recent memory. Farb is a Fanny years in the making; Khan offers a Nicky you’re unlikely to see elsewhere.
But, book and direction gripes aside, Funny Girl fills the gap left by Hacks, and ultimately emerges with a strikingly similar thesis statement: Life is short. Make the joke.