Drama. Intrigue. Glee memes. After months of speculation, it was announced this week that Lea Michele will be replacing Beanie Feldstein as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl, and the internet subsequently lost its mind.
But if you’re like the majority of the population – that is, not lurking in niche internet corners filled with theatre school rejects – then you probably have no idea what’s going on. Why do people care about Funny Girl so much?
The short answer: it’s because the Funny Girl drama proves that life is just one big Glee episode.
Let’s recap. Back in August 2021, it was announced that Beanie Feldstein landed the role of Fanny Brice in the Funny Girl revival, the first Broadway production since Barbra Streisand originated the iconic role in 1964. At the time, Feldstein had recently completed a brief Broadway stint in the Bette Midler revival of Hello, Dolly! as well as starring roles in Booksmart and Lady Bird. The news seemed like a career-defining moment for Feldstein – but it was Lea Michele who was trending on Twitter that day, as people imagined the rage she must feel having lost out on her beloved Fanny Brice.
That’s because Lea Michele has been, in various ways, auditioning for Funny Girl for the past decade. She began her public campaign for Fanny Brice in 2009, when her Glee character Rachel Berry sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in season one, and saved the glee club from defeat at Sectionals. Michele would later reprise her performance at that year’s Tony Awards, where she serenaded Beyoncé and Jay-Z in a moment that’s more cringe than, well, being a theatre kid.
Throughout Glee’s six seasons, Michele sang a total of six different Funny Girl songs. In what is has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy, her character was cast in a Broadway revival of Funny Girl in Glee’s second to last season. Rachel Berry, of course, was playing Fanny Brice.
It’s important to note that for all we know, Beanie Feldstein and Lea Michele have zero beef. Michele even congratulated Feldstein on landing the role over an Instagram exchange. “I went to my third birthday party dressed as Fanny Brice so sometimes dreams actually come true,” Beanie Feldstein captioned an Instagram post after the announcement. Lea Michele – through gritted teeth, people imagined – replied in the comments: “Yes! YOU are the greatest star! This is going to be epic!”
Feldstein said in an interview with Andy Cohen she didn’t understand why Michele was trending on Twitter that day, and that she doesn’t “know the woman whatsoever”. But what makes this casting drama all the more delicious is that the two share the same agent, according to The Daily Beast.
Flash forward to 24 April 2022: Beanie Feldstein’s opening night as Fanny Brice. The reviews for Feldstein’s performance were mainly negative, most notably for her lack of singing ability. The New York Times said her voice was “not well suited to the music”. The Guardian praised Feldstein’s comedic timing, but said her singing just wasn’t up to par. “Paper-thin, reedy in the higher registers and overly nasal throughout, Feldstein’s voice is noticeably untextured compared to the rest of the cast,” the outlet reported.
The sour reviews shook both Feldstein and Funny Girl producers, said a source to The Daily Beast, but the team were ready to stand by the star. But ticket sales for the show dropped to just 74.84 per cent capacity in July. It wasn’t long before producers announced plans to take the production in a “different direction”.
The official Twitter account for Funny Girl announced in June that Feldstein will depart from the show on 25 September, just six months after opening. Lea Michele’s name was back in the ring when a Gawker article reported she was set to take over the role. But then, a further plot twist: on Sunday, Beanie Feldstein revealed on her Instagram in a Notes-app announcement that she was departing Funny Girl sooner than expected, on 31 July. A day later, producers revealed Feldstein’s co-star Jane Lynch (and Glee alum – more on that later) will have her final performance on 4 September and her replacement, Tovah Feldshuh, will take over on 6 September.
“Playing Fanny Brice on Broadway has been a lifelong dream of mine, and doing so for the last few months has been a great joy and true honor,” Feldstein wrote. “Once the production decided to take the show in a different direction, I made the extremely difficult decision to step away sooner than anticipated.”
A different direction, or a New Direction? Behind the scenes, it had been decided that Feldstein’s understudy Julie Benko would take over the role of Fanny Brice until Lea Michele’s first performance on 6 September.
Lea Michele has been on a redemption tour for the past year. In June 2020, Michele tweeted in support of the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. In response, her former Glee co-star Samantha Ware accused Michele of bullying and racist behaviour on set. Ware, who is Black, tweeted that Michele made her life “a living hell” and had told her that if she “had the opportunity,” Michele would defecate in Ware’s wig. Other former castmates joined the opprobrium. Former Glee actor Heather Morris said that Michele was “unpleasant to work with,” while Glee guest star Dabier Snell tweeted: “Girl you wouldn’t let me sit at the table with the other cast members cause ‘I didn’t belong there’”.
Michele addressed the allegations on Instagram, in which she failed to apologise but did call the accusations merely a “perception” of her on-set behaviour. After receiving flack yet again, she issued another statement: “Whether it was my privileged position and perspective that caused me to be perceived as insensitive or inappropriate at times or whether it was just my immaturity and me just being unnecessarily difficult, I apologise for my behaviour and for any pain which I have caused.”
“We all can grow and change and I have definitely used these past several months to reflect on my own shortcomings,” she added.
Amid a worldwide pandemic and becoming a new mother to a baby boy, Michele laid low and went back to her roots. In May 2022, she was featured in an HBO documentary about the musical Spring Awakening, which Michele had starred in prior to her Glee fame. At this year’s Tony Awards, she appeared with the original cast of Spring Awakening, where they performed a 15th anniversary tribute to the show.
Now, fans of Glee are scouring tickets for Michele’s first performance as Fanny Brice. Tickets for Michele’s opening night are already selling for $570 on the low end, with some priced up to $2,500, according to Variety. Sure, the people buying these tickets could be die-hard Broadway fans willing to pay any price for a good show. Or, they could just be Gleeks hoping to witness a memorable Glee plot point mirror real life.
Because the Glee universe is slowly bleeding into our own; a Glee subplot in which Lea Michele stars as Fanny Brice in a Funny Girl revival has become reality. Jane Lynch – who played Sue Sylvester, McKinley High’s cheerleading coach and resident musical theatre hater – is also in the Broadway production of Funny Girl, but she will be leaving just as Michele joins the cast…which also happened on Glee.
If it’s true that life is just one big Glee episode, then I hope the next storyline to bleed into our timeline is when there was a gas leak in the choir room and everyone transformed into puppets.
