Oh, what a double-take can do. When Sheridan Smith’s Fanny Brice first meets the debonair gambler who will become a wastrel husband, she coos over his polished nails. Then she stops herself: comically transfixed by the absurdity of falling in love with a manicure. She knows she is in strange territory and deep water. Romance takes on a funny face. And a knowing one.
And oh, what a new take on a song can bring. Up to now I have been allergic to the blaring therapy of People. Not least because Jule Styne’s music makes Bob Merrill’s lyrics unforgettable. Smith has been my medicine. She makes the number more intimate and troubled, less self-congratulatory. She is a good belter: Don’t Rain on My Parade is a recruiting number as well as an act of defiance. Yet her most original moments are often the quietest and smallest. She turns Who Are You Now?, sung to her unreliable man, into a Sondheim sigh.
Despite all this, there is no disguising the patchiness of Funny Girl: Gypsy’s half-grown younger sister. The plot, based on Brice’s real-life career as a notably unbland hoofer in the Ziegfeld Follies, loses its drive halfway through. All parts other than the lead are pop-ups, though Marilyn Cutts does marvels with Fanny’s poker‑playing mother. Michael Mayer’s production nudges at Broadway glitter, with impressive cartwheels and backflips and a weird military ballet patrolled by Smith in an unreliable stick-on moustache. Still, action and aspiration look cramped in the tiny Menier space. Michael Pavelka’s design and Matthew Wright’s costumes are timid.
The show may get bigger lungs in a larger theatre. Funny Girl, the fastest selling show in the Menier’s 11-year history, has already got a West End transfer. The paradox it provides – a seldom-performed musical that is studded with well-known songs – is irresistible. As is the crackle of challenge. The starring role has been so identified with Barbra Streisand, it has been thought that no one else could brazen it out. Smith has defied that prediction and given “funny” a different meaning. American kookiness becomes English comedy.
• Funny Girl is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 5 March, then transfers to the Savoy theatre, London, from 9 April to 10 September
