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    Julie Benko Was the ‘Funny Girl’ No One Had Heard of, Until Now

    The actress, who covered for Beanie Feldstein, gets the part to herself for the next month, and Broadway fans are thrilled for her.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Early on in the musical “Funny Girl,” a young and determined Fanny Brice sings a line that anyone even slightly acquainted with the show will be familiar with: “I’m … (deedle-dee deedle-dee) the greatest star … (deedle-dee deedle-dee).”“I am by far,” she goes on, with endearing chutzpah. “But no one knows it.”Those five words — “but no one knows it” — have been a source of comfort to Julie Benko, who covered for Beanie Feldstein’s Brice in the Broadway revival of the show. Benko is well aware of the disappointment some audience members may have felt when they opened their Playbills and saw that white slip of paper fall out: “The role of Fanny Brice will be played by …”But by the second scene, in which Brice, an ungainly interloper with dreams of a stage career, tries to land a job alongside a bunch of leggy chorus girls, Benko said she has felt a sense of relief.The song gives Benko, the actress, a chance to level with the audience: Sure, perhaps you’ve never heard of Julie Benko, but no one had heard of Brice in the beginning, either, so why not give her a shot?“You feel them start to root for you, you feel them on your team,” Benko said in a recent interview near the August Wilson Theater, where the Broadway revival is currently running. “And then by the end of ‘I’m the Greatest Star,’ they’re so excited to be there because they feel like they’re part of the journey, part of the story.”At least for now, Benko, 33, can relinquish the anxiety that comes with that white slip of paper.For a monthlong run that started Tuesday night, she will be the Fanny Brice that audiences will expect. After Feldstein announced that she would be departing the role on July 31, nearly two months earlier than scheduled, the production tapped Benko to take over until Sept. 4, after which the former “Glee” star Lea Michele will step in. The events have put Benko near the center of a media obsession that she said she has tried to mostly ignore, instead choosing to focus on the opportunity for the role of a lifetime.In the fall, Benko will be guaranteed top billing once a week, on Thursdays — a promotion that seems, at least in part, a nod to the fact that she has proved herself to be much more than a placeholder over the past several months. Benko has filled in for Feldstein at 26 performances since “Funny Girl” opened in April. Along the way, she has established herself in theater-loving circles as a performer worth seeing.Benko as Fanny Brice, with Jared Grimes as Eddie Ryan, in “Funny Girl.”Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMadeIt started with a few adoring comments on Broadway message boards. Then her TikToks gave the public a window into the harried process of being called to do a show on short notice, multiplying the public’s awareness of her existence. These days, she said, she gets recognized by a stranger almost every day in the city.Among the Broadway fans at the first show of her run on Tuesday, Benko was a known entity. Younger ticketholders tended to know her from her viral TikToks, while older ones had heard about her through their theatergoing grapevines.At a time when it seems as if Broadway producers are hyper-focused on hiring big-name celebrities who they hope will rake in ticket sales, a segment of the industry’s cognoscenti is excited to celebrate the success of a relatively unknown actress who has worked as an understudy for Broadway-level productions since she was 19.“She must be on top of the world — I’m psyched for her,” Tucker Christon, 48, a lifelong Broadway fan, said during intermission at Tuesday’s performance. “Could it run through the fall without a big name? I don’t think so. But give her four weeks and, hello! She could do anything she wants after this.”The Great ReadMore fascinating tales you can’t help reading all the way to the end.Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of Monowi, Neb., where she operates a tavern that serves as one of the last gathering places for the remaining residents of the county. What will happen once she’s gone?TikTok is flooded with health misinformation. Meet the medical experts fighting bogus science, one “stitch” at a time.Viewers of the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building” know the Upper West Side apartment building as the Arconia. But it has a name — and a dramatic story — all its own.It also happens to be a time when Broadway has been more vocal about its appreciation for understudies and swings — performers who, during the pandemic, have been more crucial than ever. In an email praising Benko, Michele called her commitment to the production “a savior” to the show amid Covid and the casting transition.“People have been celebrating the fact that understudies keep the shows running in a way that I don’t think they did before,” Benko said.Growing up in Fairfield, Conn., Benko began imagining a career in musical theater after a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” at a local J.C.C., in which her father played the innkeeper and her mother played a villager. She was 14, and the show was directed by Tobi Beth Silver, a professional acting coach known for instructing young performers on Broadway, including cubs in “The Lion King.”“It was clear to me that day: This girl’s going to make it,” Silver said, recalling when she saw Benko audition.Cast as Hodel, the second-oldest daughter in “Fiddler,” Benko had her first kiss during the J.C.C. production. The performance also secured her the opportunity to study with Silver, who helped prepare her to audition for New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and introduced her to her first talent manager.Benko’s time as an undergraduate studying musical theater was punctuated by stints on tour. After her freshman year at Tisch, she understudied five roles in the national “Spring Awakening” tour in 2008, and later joined the “Les Misérables” tour, where she worked her way up from roles like understudy, “whore” and “innkeeper’s wife” to become Cosette.Her career came full circle in 2015 when she worked as a swing in the Broadway revival of “Fiddler,” which meant she had to be prepared to step in as any of four of Tevye’s daughters, as well as four ensemble roles, on a given night.But not even that could prepare her for all that it would take to play Fanny Brice.“I’ve covered eight roles in ‘Fiddler,’ and I feel like Fanny is more than all that put together,” Benko said, adding, with Brice-like playfulness: “Plus Tevye maybe.”Unlike Feldstein and Michele, who both have said they had long dreamed of playing Brice, Benko had no such fantasies. It was a bug that she had somehow avoided catching, despite being a Jewish girl obsessed with musical theater. When she got a callback to be Feldstein’s standby last year, she decided it was time to watch the original 1968 film, which Barbra Streisand shot after her success in the original Broadway production turned her into a star.“I’ve covered eight roles in ‘Fiddler,’ and I feel like Fanny is more than all that put together,” Benko said in an interview.Alexandra Genova for The New York TimesBut Benko was careful not to pay too much attention to the Hollywood version. Streisand’s iconic, Oscar-winning performance had played no small part in the difficulty Broadway producers had had over the decades in reviving the musical. Benko wanted to be careful not to attempt an impersonation, a sentiment that Feldstein shared.Once she landed the job, Benko was more intent on learning the quirks and mannerisms of the real Fanny Brice on which the musical is based: a comic actress who rose to stardom in the Ziegfeld Follies and fell in love with the slippery gambler and con man Nick Arnstein (played by Ramin Karimloo). Before rehearsals began in February, Benko read biographies of Brice and excerpts from her diaries. She worked with an archivist at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to watch old footage of Brice doing goofy dances and contorting her face into silly expressions.“She has an insatiable appetite for the world of the play, for the world of the story,” Brandon Dirden, who taught Benko when she returned to N.Y.U. for graduate school, said of his former student. “She doesn’t leave any stone unturned.”As Feldstein rehearsed, Benko sat on the sidelines taking notes, recording details about pacing and the intent behind lines of dialogue. After rehearsals ended, Benko would run lines with her husband and musical collaborator, Jason Yeager, in their living room. She sang through the entire score nearly every day to build stamina, and would practice the tap sequences of “Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat” in a full-length mirror, Yeager recalled.The rehearsals were primarily focused on the main cast, so it wasn’t until the day of her first performance, on April 29, that Benko got to run through a stage rehearsal with costumes, lights and microphones.When she walked onstage that night, Benko was shocked to be greeted by entrance applause — entrance applause! “It was probably the most thrilling moment of my life,” she said.She was comfortable with the choreography onstage, but it was the offstage choreography — in particular, the show’s many costume changes — that had been more difficult to practice. The show, which follows Brice from her late teens to her early 30s, packs in four wigs and 21 costumes, 19 of which are quick changes that need to happen in as short as a minute.Benko, center, with Kurt Csolak, left, and Justin Prescott in the show.Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMadeOnstage, Benko’s research into Brice is evident. She expands her large, expressive eyes into saucers of shock or disbelief, and, while dancing, she rolls them around, exaggeratedly, as if to say, “Aren’t I such a lady?” In the old footage, some of which she found on YouTube, Benko drew inspiration from a zany little dance in which Brice wiggles her arms and shuffles her feet like a wannabe ballerina.“You saw the vulnerability, you saw the intelligence,” said Bartlett Sher, the Tony-winning director who worked with Benko on “Fiddler” and was at one point the creative force behind a “Funny Girl” revival that did not ultimately come to fruition. (In 2011, he told The Times that Brice was the hardest part he had ever had to cast.)“I think everything that I love about ‘Funny Girl’ came through in seeing her play the part,” Sher said of watching Benko. “When you do one of these parts, you hook the whole company up to your back and you pull and pull everyone ahead — and she really did that.”Benko recognizes that the pressure that comes with that responsibility could become all-consuming if she let it. But instead of projecting perfection, she has opted to be open about her mistakes. She sometimes even draws attention to them, like when she posted a TikTok about a performance in which she bungled a lyric in “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” singing “get ready for me love, ’cause I’m a hummer,” instead of “’cause I’m a comer.”Earlier in her career, she said, she would have tortured herself over such a mistake. But after more than a decade in the industry, she has learned to laugh it off and accept it as part of the process.“I finally hit a point where I decided that if I wanted to make myself miserable, I should pick something that makes me rich,” she said.As Michele prepares to inherit the role, Benko will soon be tasked with learning any changes that the actress might adopt: tweaks to dialogue, blocking or key changes. When Michele arrives, Benko’s title will switch from “standby” to “alternate,” to reflect her regularly scheduled appearances. But for the next month, she will have the opportunity to fully settle into her portrayal of Fanny Brice and relax enough to let some natural playfulness emerge.“When you get the chance to play such an amazing role, there’s no need to take it too seriously,” she said. “You just have to enjoy it.”Audio produced by More

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    Lea Michele to Star in ‘Funny Girl’ After Beanie Feldstein’s Departure

    The former “Glee” star will share the stage with Tovah Feldshuh, who will replace Jane Lynch as Fanny Brice’s mother, starting Sept. 6.The actress Lea Michele will take over as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” in early September, the show said Monday, after Beanie Feldstein’s abrupt announcement that she would be leaving the role earlier than expected.Feldstein wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday night that her “dream” run as Brice, a spunky stage performer who shoots to stardom with the Ziegfeld Follies, would end on July 31, instead of the previously announced date of Sept. 25. Without elaborating, Feldstein, whose performance in the role received tepid reviews, wrote that she would leave the musical early because the production had “decided to take the show in a different direction.”The show quickly signaled that it had her successor waiting in the wings, and on Monday, it was announced that Michele — who starred in the original Broadway production of “Spring Awakening” and is best known for her central role on the television show “Glee” — would be debuting in the role on Sept. 6.Until then, the actress Julie Benko, who has been playing Brice as Feldstein’s understudy, will step in. Under a new arrangement, Benko will continue to perform in the role once a week, on Thursdays, after Michele takes over.In an Instagram post after the news was announced, Michele wrote: “A dream come true is an understatement. I’m so incredibly honored to join this amazing cast and production and return to the stage playing Fanny Brice on Broadway.”The show also announced that the actress Tovah Feldshuh, who starred in the original Broadway production of “Yentl,” will be taking over the role of Brice’s doting mother, who is currently being played by Jane Lynch. The show had previously announced that Lynch would be leaving after Sept. 25, but the new announcement moved her departure a few weeks earlier. That timetable means that Michele and Lynch, who were co-stars on “Glee,” will not be performing together.Tovah Feldshuh will replace Jane Lynch in the role of Brice’s doting mother in “Funny Girl.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesAfter Barbra Streisand originated the role of Brice in the original 1964 production, the show evaded a Broadway revival for decades, partly because comparisons with Streisand’s star-making performance seemed hard to escape.It has been no secret that Michele — who opened each chapter of her 2014 memoir, “Brunette Ambition,” with a Streisand or Brice quote — had interest in the role. A central plotline of her character on “Glee,” a cutthroat captain of the high school glee club on which the show is based, involves playing Brice, giving Michele the chance to perform songs like “People” and “I’m the Greatest Star” during the series.The “Glee” co-creator Ryan Murphy had gotten the rights to “Funny Girl,” thinking that Michele’s character would audition for the role on the TV series and then, perhaps, Michele would star in the show in real life. In a 2017 appearance on Andy Cohen’s talk show, Michele said they had been considering collaborating on a Broadway production after the end of “Glee,” but it felt too soon because she had just performed many of the songs on the TV show.“But I feel really ready to do it now,” she said on the show, “so maybe we can do it soon.”That dream did not come to fruition — until now.Michele was 8 years old when she made her Broadway debut as Young Cosette in “Les Misérables,” but spent more than a decade focused primarily on television. Michele sang at last month’s Tony Awards during a reunion performance with other original cast members of “Spring Awakening.”In 2020 the meal-kit company HelloFresh terminated its partnership with Michele after a former “Glee” castmate, Samantha Marie Ware, who is Black, tweeted that Michele had been responsible for “traumatic microaggressions” toward her. Michele released an apologetic statement on Instagram saying she did not recall making a specific comment that Ware wrote about, but adding that she had been reflecting on her past behavior. “Whether it was my privileged position and perspective that caused me to be perceived as insensitive or inappropriate at times or whether it was just my immaturity and me just being unnecessarily difficult, I apologize for my behavior and for any pain which I have caused,” she wrote.The current production of “Funny Girl,” which opened in April at the August Wilson Theater, has had strong ticket sales, grossing an average of about $1.2 million each week during the 14 full weeks since it started performances. The show’s only nomination at last month’s Tony Awards was for Jared Grimes’s role as Brice’s friend, Eddie Ryan, a tap-dance extraordinaire who aids Brice’s rise in show business.Grimes will continue in his role, as will Ramin Karimloo, who plays Brice’s suave love interest, Nick Arnstein. More

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    ‘Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known’ Review: Rock ’n’ Roll High School

    This film about the hit 2006 musical is a sure-handed blend of making-of explainer, theater-kid scrapbook, and jukebox documentary.The winner of eight Tonys in 2007 including best musical, “Spring Awakening” now gets an adoring documentary for a victory lap celebration. “Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known” does a suitably wide-eyed recap of the show’s success, on the occasion of a recent reunion concert with the endearingly jazzed cast. Michael John Warren’s film is a sure-handed blend of making-of explainer, theater-kid scrapbook and jukebox documentary, doling out hits from its theatrical run (through clips) and the reunion.Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s musical brought a tragic punch — and cathartic rock-outs and ballads — to the age-old story of adolescents grappling with desire, secret pain, and unforgiving parents and teachers. As adapted from the 1891 Frank Wedekind play, the strait-laced period setting raised the stakes on the anguish of transgression, featuring sex, suicide and the emo touch of characters whipping out anachronistic microphones.Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, later both on “Glee,” rose up playing the romantic leads, Wendla and Melchior, and here share about their offstage bond. There’s an atmosphere of openness in keeping with the show’s self-expression: Groff discusses coming out after concluding his run, and his co-star Lauren Pritchard references childhood abuse. When it comes to Sater, Sheik and the director of the original production, Michael Mayer, their recalled jitters feel a tad warmed-over, but it’s intriguing to hear Sater note the 1999 Columbine shooting as an impetus.If the documentary feels more packaged than the “American Utopia” film or the vérité classic “Original Cast Album: Company,” it succeeds as a welcoming group hug.Spring Awakening: Those You’ve KnownNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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    On the Scene: ‘Spring Awakening’ Returns 🎭

    On the Scene: ‘Spring Awakening’ Returns �� Matt Stevens��Reporting from BroadwayMatt Stevens for The New York TimesTickets for the benefit, ranging from $50 to $5,000, sold out quickly. The line to enter the theater, on 45th Street near Eighth Avenue, would eventually stretch down the block.Because of delays seating attendees, the show started over an hour late. More