Actor Who Plays Funny Girls' Beau Says Nicky Arnstein Isn't a Bad Guy

Then in 2022, a new revival of Funny Girl launched on Broadway, starring Streisand lookalike Lea Michele (Glee), a revised book by Harvey Fierstein that emphasized the show's New York Jewish roots, new choreography and rearranged musical numbers by Jule Styne, while retaining the staples: Dont Rain on My Parade, People, My Man and Im the Greatest Star.

Credits: Matthew Murphy

Credits: Matthew Murphy

It was a chance for young audiences to get acquainted with the story of Brice, a star of the Ziegfeld Follies vaudeville in the 1910s and ’20s, and his infatuation with the con man who wronged him. And it worked even without Streisand, whose Oscar-winning portrayal of Brice on Broadway and in the movies had at one point cemented the star and the role as an indelible unit in the public’s mind. (Fun fact: Eydie Gorme and Carol Burnett were both offered the role before Streisand; she was the third choice.)

And Lukas was hired for the Broadway revival as an understudy for the role of Arnstein.

One of the goals of this revival was to really flesh out the character, make him more human and give him a little more motivation for his actions, Lukas explains. So he's not just a villain.

After being Arnstein's understudy on Broadway, Lukas began playing him in the national tour, which began in September 2023 and will run through spring 2025.

In the musical, Arnstein is a lovable thug who goes to prison for embezzlement and ends up splitting up with Fanny. The real Nick Arnstein was much more than that.

For starters, his name wasn't Nick Arnstein, but Julius Arndstein. It was just one of many aliases he used during his life of crime and confidence games.

He was married when he met Brice in 1912, and they had a six-year affair until they were finally able to marry in 1918. He was arrested several times for various scams and frauds and served time in Sing Sing and Leavenworth prisons. But he lived long enough to see Francis, his daughter with Brice, help producer Ray Stark stage a sanitized version of his life in Funny Girl.

Credits: Matthew Murphy

Credits: Matthew Murphy

The show may be a fictionalized version of what happens, but there's a very clear motivation behind everything Nick has done, Lukas says. Everything he does is motivated by his love for his family. At the end of the show, not to give too much away, he makes a bad decision out of desperation, in an attempt to save his marriage.

And I think if we do our job and the audience can see it, it becomes not a story about a man antagonizing a woman, but about two people who are desperately in love and trying to find a way to make their relationship work.

Lukas, 36, grew up in Kennebunkport, Maine, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy and New York University. He laughs when it is suggested that this doesn't sound like a Dickensian childhood.

My parents worked very hard to give us a good childhood and send us to good schools. I was very lucky to have the opportunities I had.

Every November we would go to New York to see three or four Broadway shows. That’s how my love of theater began. I started doing community and regional theater when I was very young.

In college, despite his love of musicals (he starred in Oklahoma, Grease, Les Misérables, Hello, Dolly and many others), he had only a vague idea of ​​Funny Girl. Once the auditions began, he only saw the film once, so as not to copy Omar Sharif too much.

Counting Broadway and the national company, he has starred opposite six Fannies, including Katerina McCrimmon, who plays Brice in the Atlanta run and has received good reviews for her star turn. (McCrimmon's portrayal resists the Broadway mythos to find a deadly radiance instead, writes the Los Angeles Times.)

Singer Melissa Manchester (You Should Hear How She Talks About You, Dont Cry Out Loud) will also appear on the Fox show as Mrs. Brice, a role that has previously been played by notable guest stars such as Tovah Feldshuh and Jane Lynch.

Ultimately, Lukas points out, Funny Girl is a memoir piece, in which Brice turns around and tells the audience about his life. He was truly the most charming, naturally charismatic person she had ever met, he says. You see the version of him who was the love of her life.

PREVIEW AT THE THEATRE

funny girl

July 30-August 4 at the Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta. $34-$149. 855-285-8499, foxtheatre.org