MIDWEST — Stephen Mark Lukas said as soon as he found out “Funny Girl” was headed back to Broadway, he wanted to be a part of it.
“I saw they were doing the revival on Broadway in 2022, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really something I think I’d be right for,’ so I submitted a tape and I got cast in the Broadway production,” he said.
On Broadway, he performed in the show's ensemble and was the understudy for Nick Arnstein.
But when “Funny Girl” closed on Broadway, his time with the show didn’t come to an end. Lukas now plays Nick Arnstein in the North American tour of the show.
We talked to Lukas ahead of the show’s Midwest run, which includes stops at the Marcus Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee (Jan. 9 - 14) and Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio (Feb. 20 - March 10).
Spectrum News 1: What was the transition like from understudying your character on Broadway to taking on the role full time on tour?
Stephen Mark Lukas: When you’re an understudy, there’s a little piece of you that is always sort of following the path set for you by the actor who’s doing it every night. Just because of the nature of the way productions are put together, there’s certain things that you have to honor in that performance, even though you go on and put your own spin on it, you’re always sort of following the path set by another actor.
So rehearsing the tour, it was really exciting to get to forge my own path and put my own spin on it and sort of make choices that really just came from my interpretation of the character that maybe were a little bit different … than the Broadway production but still honoring the material.
Spectrum News: How did working on the Broadway production help prepare you for the tour?
Lukas: [“Funny Girl”] occupies a really interesting space in Broadway history, with Barbra Streisand in the ‘60s, and then our revival being the first one in 60 years. I got to work with Michael Rafter, who is the music supervisor, who actually was an apprentice of Julie Styne — who wrote the score. So I think I just really got to know the material and know the piece.
Spectrum News: You’ve worked on multiple revival shows. What is it about working on revivals that appeals to you?
Lukas: There’s something about looking to the past and telling stories that are familiar to us, but looking at them through the lens of today. I think, in some ways, we learn a lot about ourselves and our society today through the lens of where we came from.
I think that some of these shows, yes they exist in a different time, in a different place, and they were written in a different time and a different place — social norms and gender dynamics and all of that were very different when these shows were written. But the characters in these stories, the characters’ motivations … don’t change overtime. So I think it’s really interesting to dig into these stories from the past and shows from the past, and get to look at them through a contemporary lens and see how far we’ve come as a society, and also see the ways in which we’re still the same.
Spectrum News: If you had to describe “Funny Girl” to someone who knew nothing about the show, what would you tell them?
Lukas: It is a quintessential, great big old-fashioned Broadway musical. It has an incredible score by Julie Styne… It has some fantastic dancing in it. We have an incredible ensemble who does incredible tap numbers, choreographed by Ayodele Casel who is an amazing, amazing artist.
It has a really sort of grown up, adult story of two people who are in love. It is, at its core, a romance. I would also say that the show is a love letter to Broadway. Fanny Brice was a comedian and a Broadway star … It is a story about show business and it’s a story about a woman who is a performer, and all of the highs and all of the lows in that.
Spectrum News: What do you hope audiences take away from “Funny Girl?”
Lukas: It is a story, at its core, about a woman who has something very special and knows it. [She] is unwilling to take “no” for an answer in the face of a society that tells her she’ll never make it and tells her she’s not the right type for what she wants to do. And she kind of forges her own path and does it anyway. I think that is very inspiring. We all connect with those stories about people that have that special thing inside and know that and honor it and are able to tune out all of the noise and are able to follow their heart and find their own way.
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