NO MERE STAND-I N BUT A SIMPLY RADIANT, KNOCK- OUT SENSATION I N HER OWN RIGHT

Funny Girl

Savoy Theatre

‘Incredible, phenomenal”... Warm words of approval overheard during the interval of

Funny Girl last night. And later? A standing ovation – the object of applause caught between uncontrolled laughter and barely suppressed tears. The week Natasha J Barnes has had is the stuff of fairytales.

I rejoice not a wit that Sheridan Smith has had to leave the show for the time being. But the upside of Smith’s noshow is the discovery of Barnes. The 25-year-old isn’t just a serviceable stand-in, she’s a sensation in her own right.

It has to be said the understudy is every bit as good as the actress she’s temporarily replacing. The added piquancy is that her whirlwind story is akin to that played out on stage, the bio-drama of early 20th-century American vaudeville star Fanny Brice.

Jule Styne’s 1963 musical sees a go-ahead Brooklyn Jewish gal with dreams of fame climb the ladder of success before our eyes: “I’m the greatest star / I am by far, but no one knows it!” as one line has it – ladies and gentlemen, art meets life!

Barnes displays all the comic finesse: a sly, sideways delivery, quizzical eyebrows, a determined jaw, the puckish “funny face” that makes Brice stick out amid the poised glamour of the Ziegfeld Follies. More than that, she has a radiant charisma and twinkling mischief that’s irresistible.

She can belt out the big showstoppers, but in the closing stages displays a quiet, trembling vulnerability as the man in her life, Darius Campbell’s handsome gambler Nick Arnstein, drifts further away.

Don’t believe this five-star hype? Go see for yourselves… if you can get in.