Few stage musicals are more intimately entwined with one particular performer than “Funny Girl.” Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s bio of early-20th-century musical comedy star Fanny Brice could have easily been tossed upon the scrap heap of failed theatrical ventures were it not for the intervention of a 21-year-old New York cabaret performer named Barbra Streisand.

Taking on a part that had already been turned down by Mary Martin, Anne Bancroft, Eydie Gorme and Carol Burnett, Streisand made the role of Fanny Brice and the music of “Funny Girl” so much her own that she had a hit with one of its songs, “People,” before the show even opened on Broadway in early 1964. Five years later, Streisand won a “Best Actress” Oscar for the film version.

Katerina McCrimmon as Fanny Brice in the national touring production of “Funny Girl” at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis Jan. 16-21, 2024. (Evan Zimmerman / Murphy Made)

So what’s “Funny Girl” without Streisand? Well, if it has a cast, crew and creative staff as committed to selling every scene and song with the enthusiasm, energy and skill accorded it by the national touring production currently ensconced at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre, it can be an unqualified success. This very fun “Funny Girl” is a smiling, heartfelt tribute to the Broadway of yore, when shows were designed to knock your socks off with glitzy production numbers in elaborate costumes and big ballads belted to the back of the balcony.

The latter largely come courtesy of the charismatic Katerina McCrimmon. She places her own stamp firmly upon the Brice role, even as she incorporates some Streisand-isms into her vocal delivery. McCrimmon makes you feel as if you’re watching young Fanny Brice sing, dance, wisecrack and mug her way to stardom, ably embodying what made this comical character actor such a hit in her heyday.

That was the teens and ‘20s of the last century, and what story there is to “Funny Girl” follows Brice as she makes her way from a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood to becoming a star of the “Ziegfeld Follies” musical comedy revues on Broadway while falling for a debonair gambler named Nicky Arnstein. Alas, the second act slows as we observe Arnstein’s decline and fall and how humiliated he feels in having a wife more successful than he is.

But the first act more than makes up for that. McCrimmon establishes her scene-stealing skills early on with “I’m the Greatest Star” before showing off her comic chops on “His Love Makes Me Beautiful” and, especially, “You Are Woman, I Am Man,” a silly slice of physical comedy in collaboration with Stephen Mark Lukas’ Arnstein. And McCrimmon’s magnificent voice shows off both its subtlety and power on “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”

But she doesn’t carry the show alone. Her tap-dancing mentor, Eddie Ryan, is made spirited and sunny by Izaiah Montaque Harris, and we’re never allowed to stray far from Brice’s Brooklyn roots, thanks to Barbara Tirrell’s take on her ever-grounding but supportive mother and Eileen T’Kaye’s Mrs. Strakosh.

Under Michael Mayer’s seamless direction, the show benefits from the eye-catching choreography of Ellenore Scott and Ayodele Casel and the delightful designs of David Zinn (set), Susan Hilferty (costumes) and Kevin Adams (lighting). They help make a convincing case that the seldom-revived “Funny Girl” could find its way back into the musical theater canon, even sans Streisand.

‘Funny Girl’

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis

Tickets: $139-$40, available at hennepintheatretrust.org

Capsule: A thoroughly entertaining take on the Broadway of yore.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

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