Review: Hello Gorgeous! Broadway’s ‘Funny Girl’ star shines bright at Broward Center

Talk about a hard act to follow.

“Funny Girl” is legit Broadway legend and lore, shooting Barbra Streisand’s stardom into the stratosphere back in 1964 when the musical-comedy about vaudeville luminary Fanny Brice debuted on the Great White Way. (La Streisand went on to win an Oscar and Golden Globe for the 1968 movie version.)

As if that weren’t enough (c’mon … Barbra! … Streisand!), the 2022 revival started with Beanie Feldstein in the lead role for a little over four months before Lea Michele “Glee”-fully took over, making the show a genuine hot ticket.

And now, Miami’s own Katerina McCrimmon has stepped into the spotlight, playing Brice in the Broadway national touring production at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Fort Lauderdale through Nov. 26.

She clearly belongs center stage. “Funny Girl” needs a lead with that certain almost-undefinable something, an unmistakable glint of ambition with flashes of vulnerability in the eyes, charisma beaming from their very pores. McCrimmon is that kind of actor. She would draw your attention no matter the setting, as if she walks around daily life with a zoom closeup filter that every single mere mortal sees her through.

The 2020 Florida State University graduate needs all of that for this show. “Funny Girl” recounts Brice’s emotional ping-pong of a life from her humble beginnings on N.Y.C.’s Lower East Side to entertainment fame in the 1920s, as well as her troubled relationship with glamourous gambler Nicky Arnstein (played with cinematic allure by Stephen Mark Lukas).

The score by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill has enduring songs such as “People,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” “You Are Woman, I Am Man,” “Sadie, Sadie” and “The Music That Makes Me Dance.” They are all performed admirably by the company (though on opening night, something seemed to have come loose in the frenetic “Cornet Man” number, shelving some of its razzmatazz).

While she can belt like the sorority of singers who came before her, it is with the ballads that McCrimmon’s voice reveals its true magic, unfurling and unfolding throughout the cavernous Au-Rene Theater inside the Broward Center, and then hanging there, mid-air, with just the right amount of gloss and ache.

This is a big, brash boffo Broadway musical centered on a yesteryear comedic star of stage, screen and radio who seems to have equal measures of energy and edge bubbling in her body. To convey all of that with a road company within today’s financial realities is a tricky act to pull off.

There’s some adept staging and theatrics for maximum visual effect with minimum cost: Every kind of theater curtain and backdrop you can imagine; sparkly costumes with mile-high headdresses; proscenium arch lights acting like exclamation points; and a cast twirling and whirling across the stage for the better part of two hours with a 15-minute intermission.

Oh yes, there is lots of shameless mugging. And thank goodness for that, because it evokes the comedy aesthetic of Brice’s time for today’s young audience who know little of the Ziegfeld Follies. Fans of the big-screen version might miss those softer, reflective moments that movies can have that a stage musical cannot afford too much of (no one wants three hours with a 15-minute intermission).

The musical’s book was refreshed and revised by Harvey Fierstein (“Torch Song Trilogy,” “Hairspray,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Kinky Boots,” “Newsies”), who knows how to both extend and compress time in the narrative, giving the audience an expansive view of the musical’s story. He also fleshes out the Arnstein character more, which goes a long way in explaining the inevitable heartbreak in Brice’s life.

You hear that best, perhaps, in the last number, “The Music That Makes Me Dance,” a burning ember of a torch song. At that point, other than a ta-da coda of “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” the show has to end.

Because nothing can follow that.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Funny Girl” 

WHEN: Tuesdays to Sundays, through Nov. 26 

WHERE: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

COST: $45-$121 

INFORMATION: 954-462-0222; browardcenter.org