Streisand / LIVE 

“In the days when professional producers produced shows ... they understood that a play was a work in progress until it got to a certain state of maturity. And the way to do it was first you took the play out of town and you honed the play in front of audiences eight times a week until, finally, the producer felt ‘This is ready for Broadway,’” explained theater historian Miles Kreuger.

This “Out of Town” process was where new scenes were written, songs and dialogue were added or subtracted, and where actors were replaced.

In the 1960’s Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and New Haven were typical “Out of Town” cities.

After initial rehearsals in New York, Funny Girl “tried out” in Boston and in two different theaters in Philadelphia in the Winter of 1964.

Funny Girl producer Ray Stark and director Garson Kanin opened the show during a snow storm in Boston, Mass.  on January 13, 1964.

 William E. Sarmento of The Lowell Sun newspaper wrote this review which appeared in the January 14, 1964 paper:

"I can only guess but I'd swear that every Barbra Streisand fan in existence showed up via dog-sled, skis, and snowshoes for the opening night of the new musical, “Funny Girl” last night at the Shubert [in Boston]. And I hope that when they hand out medals for valor that someone will recall that I, too, braved the blizzard to attend this Brondwaybound vehicle. In case you are wondering, every seat in the theater was taken last night.

"Funny Girl” is the biography of the late Fanny Brice. It will be in Boston for a three week tryout then on to Philadelphia for a final three weeks of work. As of last night's opening, it will need every bit of time it can get. It is in rough shape and needs plenty of help.

...There are a few good scenes and if the plot can be sharpened and cut, the three hour running time should be curtailed. At the moment, “Funny Girl,” has troubles, but it also has Barbra Streisand and maybe she will be able to carry the show into the hit category in New York. If last night's cheering section were polled, I'm sure they would shout a resounding “yes.” I was not that convinced."

PHOTO: Streisand wearing one of her vintage coats on stage, rehearsing for 'Funny Girl.' 

Boston Globe reviewer Kevin Kelly wrote on January 19th that “the book's real trouble begins when Miss Lennart introduces the cardboard Casanova known as Nick Arnstein...”

The show was still being developed this early in the out-of-town run. “At least two songs sadly miss their mark (an echo-chamber duet called ‘It's Home,’ which tries to find homely humor in a Long Island mansion, and a lullaby sung by Chaplin that would embarrass any baby) ...”

Jule Styne told writer Donald Zec that, while in Boston, “We had the dénouement with the trial, the lawyers, the whole thing, even a scene in a hospital. That way the second act came on stronger because we showed Nicky's shortcomings, but Fran Stark did not want us to present her father in that light. We lost five songs that way, including a very moving lullaby Arnstein sings to his baby daughter. After a couple of tries the second act songs for Nicky Arnstein had to be discarded. I don't regret the loss because Chaplin couldn't sing them.”

Variety wrote, after the January 21st show: “Funny Girl [ ... ] got a brand new second act last Thursday and two truckloads of scenery, edited out, were shipped to the warehouse. The company is rehearsing practically 'round the clock and many changes are being made.”

Kelly reviewed the Boston Funny Girl once again on January 31st. Still praising Streisand's performance, he again faulted the play's second act. “The two new numbers (‘Find Yourself a Man,’ ‘Something About Me’) are both comedy songs, but the latter is an infantile production episode featuring statuesque Follies girls as babies among a lonely boy baby. It's in poor taste and humorless.”

Reviewer William E. Sarmento of The Lowell Sun returned to Funny Girl and his review was printed in the February 3, 1964 edition. Funny Girl, by now, had moved to the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia:

...I regret to report that “Funny Girl” is little better than it was the first time. As has been reported in most of the trade papers, “Funny Girl” has a new second act put in during the Boston run in addition to three new songs. But the songs merely camouflage what is painfully obvious, that “Funny Girl” is trapped into telling the story of Fanny Brice and Nick Arnstein. A story, which was written for the stage by Isobel Lennart, is filled with conventional tripe and low-grade sentimentality that once flourished in those movie musicals of the forties.

As Fanny Brice, Miss Streisand gets better with each performance. She is much more at ease now than at the outset of the engagement and has gotten more into the comical aspects of the character. She still ignites the stage when she sings and does her best to make the plot seem interesting...Without Ms. Streisand, “Funny Girl” would be a genuine disaster; with her it is more of a disappointment.

I shall never understand why one of the new songs, “Come Along With Me,” was given to Sidney Chaplin, who makes every note sound like he needed to gargle. He still plays Arnstein with the same flare as if the character had been cut from cardboard.

Kay Medford's portrayal of the mother is funny if you haven't seen her do a similar routine in “Bye Bye Birdie”. She has one of the new songs, “Find Yourself a Man” which is amusing. Miss Streisand has been given another comedy number, “Something About Me,” in which she cavorts as the only boy baby in a girl infested nursery. It's cute but not sensational.

...The “Rat-Tat-Tat” number now has Miss Streisand as a Jewish doughboy instead of a German Kaiser. They may love this in New York, but it hardly peps up a basically corny routine.

Director Jerome Robbins rejoined the Funny Girl company in Philadelphia, replacing director Garson Kanin. “I considered that I had been fired,” Garson Kanin said. “I did not desert the company entirely, but I withdrew and Jerry took over. The final credit ‘Directed by Garson Kanin—Production Supervised by Jerome Robbins’ was as confusing to me as it was to everyone else.”

It was during out-of-town-tryouts that Robbins staged Streisand's intitial entrance with two wolfhounds on a leash. Streisand was supposed to stop center stage with the dogs, but they never hit their mark. Royce Wallace [who played “Emma” the maid] recalled, “The idea was good, but the dogs didn't know they were supposed to stop when she stopped. They took 'em right out after that, we said, now let's get on with the show.”

Other contributions from Robbins included many choreography notes for Carol Haney—he eventually fired her in New York. Robbins deemed “Cornet Man” to be too professionally danced for a second-rate vaudeville show; he asked Haney to re-do “Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat” several times; and he pronounced the dancing in “Henry Street” to be too splashy for a New York neighborhood party. For “You Are Woman, I Am Man,” Robbins suggested Streisand's comedic countermelody to Nick Arnstein's seduction. Robbins’ biggest contribution to getting Funny Girl on track was to pare down the story (including Sydney Chaplin's role as Arnstein) and highlight Streisand.

Robbins said Streisand was “an untiring, tenacious worker” at rehearsal. He expanded on that by explaining “At rehearsals, she often arrives late, haphazardly dressed in no-nonsense clothes, her hair shoved up under a cap. She accepts the twelve pages of new material to go in that evening's performance and pores over them while schnorring part of your sandwich and someone else's Coke. She reads, and, like an instantaneous translator, she calculates how all the myriad changes will affect the emotional and physical patterns, blocking, costumes, exits and entrances, etc. When she finishes reading, her reactions are immediate and violent—loving or hating them—and she will not change her mind. Not that day.”

Jule Styne composed many songs for Funny Girl that were discarded as its book changed. Styne's biographer Theodore Taylor wrote that Styne created 56 separate pieces for the show.

Styne and Merrill first created a few numbers for Funny Girl on speculation, to see how they would work together. Styne said, "The first tune I played him was originally considered as the title tune –  the show was then called A Very Special Person – but after working on it Merrill came up with the lyric for 'People.' Ten days later we had four more tunes – 'Don't Rain On My Parade,' 'Who Are You Now,' 'I'm the Greatest Star,' and 'The Music That Makes Me Dance.'

In a 1977 interview, Styne explained, “I wrote the music for Barbra but they had already signed Anne Bancroft to play Fanny Brice. I wondered how I was going to get this little girl who was singing down in the Village in the show when they already had Anne Bancroft. So I wrote the toughest score. Only Barbra could sing it.”

As Styne tells it, after she heard the score Anne Bancroft said, "You'll never find anyone to sing those songs," and walked out of the room. Styne confessed that Bob Merrill had dated Anne Bancroft three years before, "and that it ended terribly." (Which may explain her behavior). 

The road from development  to first rehearsal  and to opening night involved many rewrites of the script, as well as a myriad of songs written by Styne and Merrill. 

Ultimately, when  Funny Girl opened and was “frozen,” it had some fifteen songs, instrumental interludes between scenes, and dance music arranged by Luther Henderson.

Here's a list of the cut songs from Funny Girl and what we know about them. In theatrical lore, these are known as “trunk songs” – songs written for a show that, when not used, are put away in the songwriter's "trunk" for use later.

Barbra Archives culled this information from articles, Playbills that listed the cut songs, as well as The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library.

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