Barbara McCrane

Born December 6, 1964, in Philadelphia, she spent her childhood in the McCranes’ musical household in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County. The fourth of Eileen and Jim McCrane’s five children, Barbara would say she did not always get the attention she deserved. She was determined to change that — and did.

She studied American literature and drama at Hofstra University, where her heart was in the theater. She spent a year in the company at People’s Light in Pennsylvania, then moved to Hell’s Kitchen for her career in musical theater. Barbara performed across the Northeast, at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and summers at the Williamstown Theater Festival, among others.

In 1991, she met her future husband Paul Reale at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. She was performing with The 52nd Street Project, a nonprofit started by Paul’s brother, that helped Hell’s Kitchen kids write and perform in plays. Paul’s brother and Barbara’s brother were friends who had been conspiring to set them up for months.

Paul first saw her while she was performing on stage. The pair ran into each other in the lobby and, while they were having their first conversation, it became clear that this was a very public meeting. Word had spread. Paul was getting grins of approval from middle schoolers over Barbara’s shoulder.

Three weeks later, they were on their first date at Good Enough to Eat on the Upper West Side. Paul had asked her out over voicemail, and she never stopped making fun of him for it.

They got married on September 24, 1994, which also was Paul’s birthday. Barbara acted through the first few years of marriage and found success in regional theater. She discovered the Alexander Technique and studied breathing and posture for three years at ACAT, the American Center for the Alexander Technique. When she and Paul decided to start a family, she stepped away from acting.

Hannah Reale was born in the summer of 1998 after 43 long hours of labor. Barbara loved being a mother and, by the end of her life, believed it was the most important thing she ever did. She spent her days with Hannah through those first few years of childhood to cultivate her mind and her sense of self.

But Barbara knew she still wanted to work. Barbara parlayed her Alexander Technique certification into a course she taught at the Manhattan School of Music. There, she built her own program over the next 20 years, helping hundreds of young musicians free up their bodies and improve their playing.

Even when she stopped acting on stage, you could still catch a performance of a hilarious Barbara McCrane show. She always had stories to tell and hone and retell, earning her the affectionate nickname of “Blabsy.” Anyone who talked to Barbara in the last 20 years heard some version of the story of her driving through the Lincoln Tunnel with an unexpectedly sturdy Burger King bag.

She loved art and beauty, frequently going to the theater, museums, and the New York Botanical Garden.

Barbara was hands-on in caring for everyone in her life, including her father up until he died in 2009 and her mother until she died in 2018. She’d drive the two hours to Sewell, N.J., every week and plant flowers in her mom’s front lawn and, later, to the assisted living facility in Boonton, N.J. when her mother’s memory began to fail. Barbara would make up reasons to bring the family together, like a birthday party for her dog Spot.

The last decade of Barbara’s life was hard. She faced these trials with an impossible determination — a determination that was at times maddening and always awe-inspiring.

She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. She seemed to have beaten it, but, in 2021, it returned. She never lost her straight-A-student personality, impressing her doctors like elementary school teachers and wowing them with the years of life she wrung out of a cruel illness.

But Barbara did not want to be known as a “fighter”; the way she saw it, she was still just living her life, going to Broadway shows, weddings, up to Boston to see a John Singer Sargent exhibit, and starting up a virtual book club. Family and friends were still coming over to visit and chat through her final days, even when she couldn’t speak anymore.

She is survived by her husband, Paul Reale; her daughter, Hannah Reale; and her siblings, Jim (Dorothy), Paul (Dana), Maureen (Woody), and Deirdre (Jack). She was preceded in death by her parents, Eileen and Jim McCrane.

Family and friends are invited to remember Barbara on Sunday, August 17, at 12:30 p.m. Services will be held at Riverside Memorial Chapel on the Upper West Side.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the West Side Campaign Against Hunger (wscah.org) or the Riverside Park Conservancy (riversideparknyc.org).