‘Funny Girl’: Lea Michele Gets Four Standing Ovations – By Intermission; Jonathan Groff, Ryan Murphy Among The Gleeful Crowd
deadline.comFour standing ovations before intermission. Sounds like Lea Michele’s first night as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl is going, well, gleefully.Among those standing: Former Spring Awakening castmate Jonathan Groff, Glee creator Ryan Murphy and Harvey Fierstein, who added some new material to this musical revival.Michele is making her public debut in the show tonight, and although critics won’t be in attendance until later this month, audience members are already taking to social media with reactions and accounts from the show.
Sources at the August Wilson Theatre tell Deadline that Michele received her first standing ovation upon her entrance, and there were at least three more before the end of the first act.Michele also apparently got a big laugh from one of the show’s more innocuous bits of dialogue – though given the crazy conspiracy rumors about her literacy, the quip was more than a little weighted: Early in the show, Fanny recalls growing up on Henry Street in Brooklyn, and notes, “I hadn’t read many books.”Also making her debut in the show tonight is Tovah Feldshuh as Mrs.
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