Stephen Mark Lukas has fulfilled his destiny.
The musical theater actor plays ne’er-do-well gambler Nicky Arnstein in the national touring company of “Funny Girl” that opens at the Fox Theatre on July 30. When he had just enrolled in New York University back in 2006, his first voice teacher said, “You’re gonna play Nicky Arnstein someday.”
“I was like, well, that’s a strange thing to say,” he recalls, “because I sort of knew that the show was not really done anymore. It was sort of seen as a clunky old show and they weren’t gonna revive it because it was too hard to do without Barbra Streisand.”
Then in 2022, a new “Funny Girl” revival launched on Broadway, with Streisand doppelgänger Lea Michele (“Glee”), a revised book by Harvey Fierstein that emphasized the show’s New York Jewish roots, new choreography and rearranged Jule Styne musical numbers, while still keeping the showstoppers: “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “People,” “My Man” and “I’m the Greatest Star.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
Credit: Matthew Murphy
It was a chance for younger audiences to become acquainted with the story of Brice, one of the vaudeville stars of the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1910s and 1920s, and her ill-fated infatuation with the caddish con man who did her wrong. And it worked even without Streisand, whose Broadway and Oscar-winning film portrayal of Brice had at one time cemented star and role into a single, indelible unit in the public mind. (Fun fact: Eydie Gorme and Carol Burnett were both offered the role before Streisand; she was third choice.)
And Lukas was hired for the Broadway revival as 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 bit more motivation for his actions,” Lukas says. “So he’s not just a villain.”
After understudying Arnstein on Broadway, Lukas began playing him in the national tour that started in September 2023 and runs through spring 2025.
In the musical, Arnstein is a lovable rogue who goes to jail for embezzlement and ends up splitting from Fanny. The real Nick Arnstein was a lot more than that.
For starters, his name wasn’t Nick Arnstein, it was Julius Arndstein. That was just one of several aliases he used during a 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 many times for various swindles and frauds and served time in both 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.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
Credit: Matthew Murphy
“The show might be a romanticized version of that, but there’s a very clear motivation for everything Nick did,” says Lukas. “Everything that he does is because of his love for family. At the end of the show, not to give too much away, he makes one bad decision out of desperation, in an attempt to save his marriage.
“And I think that if, we’re doing our job, and the audience can see that, it becomes not a story of a man antagonizing a woman, but of two people who desperately love each other, and are 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’s suggested that does not sound like a Dickensian childhood.
“My parents worked really hard to give us a good childhood and to send us to good schools. I was very fortunate to have the opportunities that I had.
“Every November, we would drive down to New York and see three or four Broadway shows. And that was really how my love for theater was born. I started doing community theater and regional theater when I was very young.”
In college, despite a love for musicals (he’s been in “Oklahoma,” “Grease,” “Les Mis,” “Hello, Dolly” and more), he was only vaguely aware of “Funny Girl.” Once he was into the audition process, though, he saw the movie — just once, so he wouldn’t copy Omar Sharif too much.
Counting Broadway and the national company, he’s played opposite six Fannys, including Katerina McCrimmon, who portrays Brice on the tour coming to Atlanta and has been receiving strong reviews for her star turn. (“McCrimmon’s portrayal resists the Broadway myth to find mortal radiance instead,” wrote The Los Angeles Times.)
Also in the Fox show will be singer Melissa Manchester (“You Should Hear How She Talks About You,” “Don’t Cry Out Loud”) as Mrs. Brice, a role with a history of high-profile guest stars such as Tovah Feldshuh and Jane Lynch.
Ultimately, Lukas points out, “Funny Girl” is a memory play, with Brice looking back and telling the audience about her life. “He was really just the most charming and effortlessly charismatic person she had ever met,” he says. “You’re seeing her version of him that was the love of her life.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“Funny Girl”
July 30-Aug. 4 at Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. $34-$149. 855-285-8499, foxtheatre.org.
About the Author
