Lea Michele excelled on a Broadway stage in Barbra Streisand’s well-known role Fanny Brice, as foretold on Glee not too long ago. Darren Criss was in the crowd to support her. A heartwarming snapshot posted on Michele’s Instagram after the Funny Girl revival performance on Wednesday, October 5, reveals the two former castmates enjoyed a brief McKinley High reunion backstage.
In the picture, Michele is posing in front of a black stage curtain with one arm around Criss and the other around his wife, director Mia Swier, looking chic in a black jacket and gold hoops earrings. She joked in her caption, “The number of times this guy has heard me perform Don’t Rain On My Parade. I adore you.
The actress not only performs “Don’t Rain On My Parade” every night in the Broadway production of Funny Girl revival, in which she has appeared since taking over Beanie Feldstein’s role as Fanny in September, but it was also the theme song for her Glee character Rachel Berry.
One of the main themes of the TV series, which ended in 2015—seven years before the following scenario occurred in real life—was Rachel getting the part of Fanny in a fictitious Broadway production of Funny Girl. On her opening night, some of her former classmates, including Criss’ Blaine Anderson, as well as Coach Sue Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch, who was a member of the real-life Funny Girl revival ensemble but left the show shortly before Michele joined, visit her.
It appears from the Scream Queens alum’s Instagram post that life does imitate art. Not just Criss, but several of her former Glee co-stars, went to the performance. According to Deadline, Jonathan Groff and Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, were there at Michele’s opening night, when she earned not one, not two, but four standing ovations.