Fanny Returns to the Phoenix Stage

The , Naugatuck Valley’s Community Theatre, will bring back One Night With Fanny Brice for one weekend only, Aug. 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. and Aug. 14 at 2 p.m. The show was first presented back in January specifically to cover the cost of the new audience chairs and was a bit hit. Since I missed that run, I will be attending the matinee on Sunday. The production is directed and choreographed by one of the partners in the Phoenix, Sharon A. Wilcox, with musical direction by TJ Thompson and featuring Connecticut actress Mary Cantoni Johnson in the title role. The show was written, arranged and originally directed by Chip Deffaa and is still running Off-Broadway with costumes by Renee Purdy, who has done work for Seven Angels Theatre.

Click to see a video of photographs from the first production at the Phoenix

One Night features the songs Fanny Brice made famous, like "Second Hand Rose," "My Man" and "Rose of Washington Square;" and there's drama a-plenty in the story of Brice's romance with the debonair but untrustworthy, Nick Arnstein. It was a whitewashed version of Brice’s life that was the basis of the movies Funny Girl and Funny Lady featuring Barbra Streisand; this show is a more realistic picture of the actress’ life. Admittedly, I remember nothing of the real Fanny Brice, but I am very familiar with the Streisand version of these songs, so I am looking forward to this.

Here is how Andy Webster described the show in his (mostly negative) review in the New York Times:

“One Night,” fleetingly framed as a visit by Brice from the afterlife, bounds from her childhood in New Jersey to a vaudeville amateur night in Brooklyn, where her singing prompted a shower of coins from the audience, to tours in burlesque (when it meant satire, not stripping) and her discovery by Florenz Ziegfeld. It portrays the young Brice as a daddy’s girl, eager to sing for her father (a drunk and a gambler), and views her later fraught relationship with the career criminal Nicky Arnstein as an extension of that. (Scant attention is paid to her other two marriages.)

All seats for this special performance are $25. For tickets call the box office at (203) 632-8546 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com.