The local production of “Funny Girl” was supposed to start at 2 pm Sunday. By 2:15 the audience was getting antsy. From behind a side curtain out stepped the executive director of the theater company to apologize for the delay and to explain that the star of the show playing Fanny Brice had an untimely ailment. Her understudy needed a few minutes more to get makeup and costumes in order.
Most of the audience had read or heard rave reviews about the now incapacitated Fanny. They, including Gilda and me, naturally wondered if we would get our money’s worth.
We were about to experience first hand a version of “42nd Street” wherein an unproven “young, naive chorus girl, Peggy Sawyer, gets her big break when the leading lady of a new musical breaks her ankle, forcing Peggy to step into the spotlight and become an overnight star.”
We needn’t have worried.
Though Emma Mischel generally performs as one of the ensemble of the Arts Express Theatre of Tucson, she seized her moment, fully embodying the role that catapulted Barbra Streisand into a tour-de-force star when it opened on Broadway March 26, 1964.
Streisand was a month shy of her 22nd birthday when “Funny Girl” premiered. Emma Mischel is two years older.
If there were any mishaps in her performance I couldn’t detect them from my front row seat. She blended seamlessly with cast members, all of whom hugged her after the finale.
Now, I am not predicting national stardom for Emma. But for one day she fulfilled the role every understudy secretly aspires to embrace.
As I was composing this blog I was struck by Emma’s last name. It sounded familiar. And then I remembered that the recent “Funny Girl” revival on Broadway had its lagging sales revived when Lea Michele took over the Fanny Brice role from Beanie Feldstein.
Michele. Mischel. Sounds too true to be believed if I hadn’t experienced it myself.
