Get Ready for Her- Lea Michele to Play Fanny Brice in Ryan Murphy's FUNNY GIRL Revival?

By: Feb. 21, 2014
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As first reported exclusively by BroadwayWorld, GLEE creator Ryan Murphy has acquired the stage rights to FUNNY GIRL, the musical in which Rachel Berry (played by Lea Michele) stars in, on the current fifth season of GLEE. Back as early as 2011, when a revival of FUNNY GIRL was in the works, Ryan Murphy noted in interviews that "I keep saying that with the new Funny Girl revival, they should just say it's Rachel Berry in Funny Girl - get Lea to do that, but as Rachel Berry... It would be a crowd-pleaser."

Now in a Teen Vogue interview between Michele and her Spring Awakening co-star Jonathan Groff, Michele reveals that plans might already be in the works. She told Teen Vogue: "I want to do movies. I have some exciting things coming up! And I would also love to go back to Broadway. Ryan Murphy just bought the rights to Funny Girl, so we're hoping to do that at some point!"

Click here to read the full interview.

Murphy recently revealed that next year's sixth season will be GLEE's last, making its stars available for other projects soon after filming wraps in 2015.

FUNNY GIRL is a musical with a book by Isobel Lennart, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The semi-biographical plot is based on the life and career of Broadway, film star and comedienne Fanny Brice and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nick Arnstein. Its original title was My Man.

The Broadway production opened on March 26, 1964, catapulting the original star Barbra Streisand to worldwide stardom. The musical was directed by Garson Kanin and choreographed by Carol Haney under the supervision ofJerome Robbins. Streisand reprised her role in the 1966 West End production at the Prince of Wales Theatre directed byLawrence Kasha. When Streisand became pregnant and had to drop out of the show, her understudy, Lisa Shane, wife of Italian Job Director, Peter Collinson, took over, and continued to perform until the show closed.

The show was scheduled to return to Broadway in 2012, in a production starring Lauren Ambrose and Bobby Cannavale and helmed by Bartlett Sher. The revival was postponed (and eventually cancelled) due to the 'economic climate.'



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