Beanie Feldstein will miss this weekend’s performances of Broadway’s Funny Girl due to a case of tonsillitis and being “extremely contagious.”
Feldstein’s standby Julie Benko will perform as Fanny Brice this weekend.
“You just gotta laugh at a certain point,” Feldstein says in an Instagram video posted this afternoon. “When it rains it pours on your old pal Beanie.”
In the video, Feldstein says she has just gotten back from an appointment with her ear-nose-and-throat doctor and, on doctor’s orders, will not be able to take the stage until antibiotics render her non-contagious.
“The last thing I would want on this earth is to get people I love sick,” she says, “and I’m just not allowed to go on stage through the weekend.”
Feldstein, whose recent announcement that she would leave the show for good on July 31 prompted a torrent of headlines – which only increase the following day with the replacement casting of Lea Michele – begins her new Instagram video with a joke: “Hey everybody, I’m just checking in. What have I missed? What’s been going on? I’ll start…”
Benko will take over the Fanny role during the month of August prior to the Sept. 6 arrival of Michele, and will perform the show on Thursday nights thereafter.
Watch the video below.