June 1964. You’ve finally scored a ticket to see Funny Girl, a new musical biography of Ziegfeld/early radio star Fanny Brice. Brice isn’t really a personality that means much to you, but the young actress playing her sure does. 22-year old Barbra Streisand has already established herself as a rising supernova thanks to her scene stealing role in 1962’s I Can Get if for You Wholesale, TV appearances (including an amazing duet with Judy Garland), and two albums (the first of which recently won Grammys for Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal Performance). As a musical, Funny Girl is…adequate. But Streisand is sensational and nothing else matters much when she’s onstage. She starts as an awkward girl from Brooklyn who nonetheless believes she’s “The Greatest Star,” and you believe her! She clowns around, belts several great Jule Styne tunes (though everyone else gets decidedly less exciting material), and falls in love with inveterate gambler Nicky Arnstein. At the end of Act 1 , Arnstein runs off to play a high stakes poker game, and, despite the well-founded objections of everyone she knows, Brice decides to take a leave of absence from the Follies and follow the man she loves, telling the naysayers, “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”

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