Show Synopsis:
Teenage Fanny Brice starts her career in vaudeville by being funny instead of conventionally beautiful and talented, and meets Nicky Arnstein soon afterwards. Although her career flourishes and she becomes a star, Nicky convinces her to marry him if he wins a fortune gambling. After they marry, Fanny invests heavily in a casino, which fails and pushes Nicky to embezzlement. He goes to prison and when he gets out, he and Fanny decide to separate, and Fanny has to learn to start again.
Character:
Fanny Brice, an idealistic teenager who longs to be a vaudeville performer despite the fact that she is not conventionally beautiful; funny and blunt.
Song Context:
Nick has been arrested for embezzlement, but Fanny will not let that affect her feelings for him, although she hates feeling helpless in this situation.
Fun Facts:
1) While casting the original Broadway production of Funny Girl, the team considered Mary Martin to play Fanny Brice. Stephen Sondheim, who at the time had agreed to write the lyrics, told Jule Styne "You've got to have a Jewish girl, and if she's not Jewish she at least has to have a nose." Sondheim dropped the project, and Barbra Streisand was cast in the role.
2) Streisand reprised the role for the film adaptation and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actress.
3) This musical is based on real events in the life of Fanny Brice, an entertainment star of the early twentieth century.
"I add two and two, the most simple addition,
Then swear that the figures are lying.
I'm a much better comic than mathematician
'Cause I'm better on stage than at intermission,
And as far as the man is concerned,
If I've been burned,
I haven't learned.
I know he's around when the sky and the ground start in ringing,
I know that he's near by the thunder I hear in advance,
His words--his words alone--are the words that can start my heart singing,
And his is the only music that makes me dance.
He'll sleep and he'll rise, in the light of two eyes that adore him.
Bore him it might, but he won't leave my sight for a glance.
In ev'ry way, ev'ry day, I need less of myself and need more him--more him,
'Cause his is the only music that makes me dance,
'Cause his is the only music that makes me dance."