NEW YORK — To portray the life of legendary musical theater performer Fanny Brice on stage requires confidence and nerve, as well as talent.
Not to worry — Kimberly Faye Greenberg is up to the task. She’s sassy, lively and animated in the solo show, “One Night With Fanny Brice,” a charming new musical which opened Sunday night off-Broadway at St. Luke’s Theatre.
Written, directed and arranged by Chip Deffaa, the solo show chronologically covers Brice’s immigrant childhood and long career in show business, and her tumultuous love life with faithless con artist Nick Arnstein.
Brice, a popular comedienne and singer for decades during the first half of the 20th century, is probably best-known to modern audiences through Barbra Streisand’s iconic portrayal in the popular 1964 Broadway musical “Funny Girl” and the 1968 film of the same name, for which Streisand won an Academy Award.
Greenberg is close in appearance to Brice, with a similarly warm stage presence, mobile face, natural comedic talent and expressive way of singing. She artfully creates her own persona of Brice, a more down-to-earth, realistic depiction of a woman who was a determined, insecure, but irrepressible and unstoppable force of nature.
In her trip from burlesque to vaudeville to Broadway and international stages, Brice created a lot of her own characters, whom Greenberg also portrays with flair, including the beloved radio personality known as Baby Snooks.
Deffaa’s script has Brice lovingly, and often wryly, discuss her family and childhood, sketching portraits of her gambling charmer of a father and her hardworking, no-nonsense mother, including brief imitations of them. She recalls milestones of her career, from joyfully collecting change thrown onstage during her first performances to her many successful years as a headlining performer. Greenberg also nicely impersonates some of the important people in Brice’s life, from famed impresario Florenz Ziegfeld to Arnstein to celebrities like her friends Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields.
Some 40 songs are partially or fully sung, interspersed with colorful stories of Brice’s rise to fame. Greenberg has a richly colored voice, well-suited to her comedic numbers, like the double helping of Roses, “Rose of Washington Square” and “Second Hand Rose.”
She’s equally affecting on serious ballads, such as “My Man,” which Deffaa has intercut with the story of Brice’s unfortunate relationship with Arnstein, and a dramatic, “After You’ve Gone.”
Deffaa has distilled Brice’s busy life and career into a well-paced two-hour show, complete with live accompaniment by musical director Richard Danley on piano and Jonathan Russell on violin.
Greenberg is still performing in the long-running “Danny and Sylvia, the Danny Kaye Musical,” in the same off-Broadway theater. For a warm look back at a colorful period in show business, spending this “One Night With Fanny Brice” is well worth the time.
