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Gutsy and authentic, "One Night With Fanny Brice" is the best one-person show currently playing, on or Off-Broadway, in New York. And it provides Kimberly Faye Greenberg – giving a potent demonstration of old-school showmanship – a breakout role. For two solid hours, she brings to life the legendary star of stage, screen, and radio. And if the Brice she conjures up doesn’t have the polish and sheen of Barbra Streisand’s portrayal on screen in "Funny Girl" and "Funny Lady," one suspects it’s much closer to the real thing. Greenberg’s Brice is a survivor, tough and ambitious, determined to make her way to the top. With the kind of forceful personality that one would have needed to rise from a humble home in Newark, New Jersey to become the highest-paid American singing comedienne.

ASCAP Award-winner Chip Deffaa, who wrote, arranged, and directed this tour-de-force, has created a show far different from "Funny Girl." For one thing, there are the songs: 25 glorious samplings from Brice’s vaudeville, burlesque, and Broadway repertoire. These are the real deal. For the Broadway musical "Funny Girl," composer Jule Styne and Bob Merill wrote an entirely new score, intended to evoke Brice’s era; they were not songs Brice herself ever sang, though; they were written a dozen or so years after she died.

By contrast, Deffaa is bringing us the actual songs that helped carry Brice to fame. These time-tested songs work just fine, of course, as entertainment for the sake of entertainment.

But as this deftly layered show goes along, it becomes clear that the songs Deffaa has chosen are actually serving dual purposes–they are highlights of Brice’s own repertoire, but they are also telling her life story. And I found that fascinating.

The key experiences of Brice’s life are by turns foreshadowed and reflected upon in the songs she sings in this show. Yes, Deffaa’s tightly written script relates, via spoken words, Brice’s experiences. But the songs themselves echo, amplify, and offer subtle shadings to further tell her story. Is the love of her life, Nicky Arnstein cheating on her? Misleading her? Making her a low priority in his life? Yes, that is told in the words of the script. But it is also told via songs, both humorous ("Oy! How I Hate that Fellow Nathan," "Second Hand Rose") and poignant (climaxing with her signature song, "My Man," which Greenberg sings twice, to great effect).

The key theme of Brice’s emotional life–her sadness over an emotionally absent man–is foreshadowed in the very first song we hear her sing as a child in this show, "Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home." She sings that song with the jaunty happiness of a child who hasn’t yet experienced the pain of abandonment. But the words are telling. At later points in the show, after suffering increasing emotional losses, she will sing two other songs with almost identical lyric content, "Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home?" (sung when Arnstein is sentenced to prison) and a harrowing "After You’ve Gone" (sung when she realizes, once and for all, that the relationship is over). And each time she revisits this same theme, she does so with greater understanding. Deffaa has positioned these songs well for cumulative impact.   

Greenberg’s performance of "After You’ve Gone," by the way, is for me the high point of the show: all-out, acoustic old-school belting, with plenty of guts--of a sort that you rarely hear any more. She sings that number well on the cast album (which I recommend)–but she sang it with even greater depth of feeling and raw emotion, in the theater at the performance I attended.  

I like the cast album, but in almost every instance, Greenberg found more in the numbers, singing them "live" in the theater, than she did on the recording. Well, her tap-dancing was crisper and more rhythmically self-assured on the recording; but with that exception noted, she generally came across as a stronger performer "live" than I had anticipated, based on the recording.

Either she has found more in the songs, as time has passed since she recorded the CD, or else the energy of the live audience in the theater was inspiring her to greater heights.

In any event, when she finally digs into "After You’ve Gone" in the show--after suffering a lot of emotional distress--I'm confident you’ll be thinking. as I was: "This is one fierce diva."

Deffaa’s script gives us a much more complex, and interesting Fanny Brice that we saw in "Funny Girl." This Brice is intuitive, street-smart, and she learns from her mistakes. The big song in "Funny Girl" is "People." Streisand, of course, sang it beautifully. But have you ever really listened to the words? The song, proclaiming that "people who need people are the luckiest people in the world," is a somewhat sappy celebration of neediness. The basic  theme of "Funny Girl"–as expressed in that song--is that Brice needs her man to feel fulfilled. By contrast, the theme of "One Night with Fanny Brice" is that, ultimately Brice doesn’t need anyone. Deffaa gives us, in the end, a stronger and more independent Brice. It’s a more attractive portrait, and for me it seems to ring true.

The musicians in this show deserve special mention, because pianist/musical director Richard Danley and violinist Jonathan Russell show a sympathy for the material that is rare. Their playing is period, it is fresh, and it is extremely expressive. It is dripping with honest sentiment. After the performance I attended, a little crowd gathered around as the musicians played the exit music–and applauded when they finished; you don’t often see that happen.  But they are contributing mightily to this valentine to an era. And I loved the sense of style that costume designer Renee Purdy has given Brice.  I wish more women nowadays wore the  flattering  sorts of dresses that Purdy has come up with for Brice.

 I have some small complaints about the show, but they should not discourage anyone from going to see it. I occasionally missed some of Greenberg’s words; she needs to be more mindful, at times, of projection and pronunciation. She is not wearing a body mike–and I  like that old-style effect of hearing a singer and acoustic musicians creating their own dynamics. But she has to be very careful to make sure we hear every word.

Greenberg is terrific at creating characterizations; I liked the way she could conjure up, via inflections and body language, Nicky Arnstein, Madame Freedman, Mr. Keeney, and various other characters of her life. She doesn’t quite have the voices yet, though, of  such well-known figures as Eddie Cantor and W. C. Fields. She could work a little more on those impersonations.

But it’s a powerful little musical play. It starts somewhat  leisurely. Don't let that throw you off. The first act is almost all set-up; the pay-off--and it is intense--comes in the second act. Wait for it!  "One Night with Fanny Brice" is a helluva show.  It's clearly the standout solo show of the season, just as the Zero Mostel piece ("Zero Hour")  was the standout of the last season.

I didn’t realize that Kimberly Faye Greenberg–who does a pretty good job in "Danny and Sylvia," but I'm afraid that’s not much of a play–had this  in her. This is a star turn in an extremely  well-constructed piece of theater. And it is not to be missed.

-- Rob Adams