Streisand At The Center Of Two Plays

ArtInfo
May 10, 2013, 12:29 pm
The Legend of Barbra Streisand Shines on the New York Stage
Patrick Pacheco

One of the fascinating footnotes of this season is that Barbra Streisand is being reincarnated both off-Broadway, in Jonathan Tolins’s “Buyer and Cellar” and on Broadway, in John Logan’s “I’ll Eat You Last.” And, in the process, both critically-acclaimed shows are making the box office sing.

“I’ll Eat You Last,” of course, is the vehicle that has brought Bette Midler back to the legit stage after an absence of more than four decades. In this hilarious one-person comedy, she plays the late Sue Mengers, the super-agent who ruled the Hollywood roost for much the ’70s. Although the play deals with her stunning artists roster – from Paul Newman to Gene Hackman to Mike Nichols – the jewel in her crown was her client and soul mate, Streisand. Thus, there are constant references in the play to the superstar, then at her height. Indeed, it is set in 1981, as Mengers, ensconced in her Hollywood manse, awaits a call from La Streisand herself to tell her that she has been fired. At one point, after a reverie about their shared past, the famously foul-mouthed agent picks up the phone and shouts, “Call me, you cunt!”

A homage it is not.

“Buyer and Cellar,” on the other hand, is a gay fantasia, a one-person play splendidly acted by Michael Urie (“Ugly Betty”) and inspired by Streisand’s 2010 tome, “My Passion for Design,” about her sprawling Malibu compound. Taking his cue from page 190 of the book – in which the superstar describes how she turned a massive basement into a Disney-like Main Street of shops in which to display her various collections – Tolins imagines Streisand hiring an out-of-work actor, whom he calls Alex More, to man the shops. In the course of the play, Alex has a series of encounters with the star herself as she descends from her Olympian perch to visit the shopping mall and to bargain with him over her own stuff. While there is a touch of absurdist theater to the piece, there is also a wide-eyed veneration.

“When I stood before the ”˜People’ dress, I felt a rapture that could only be described as religious ecstasy,” says Alex on his first exploration of the various shops. “I was a little girl in Fatima, blinded by a vision of the eternal.”

What comes into sharp focus in both shows, with brilliant touches of clever satire, is the cliche that it is lonely – very, very lonely – at the top. But the comedies also display an unaffected admiration for what Streisand has achieved in her career despite daunting odds. Even the ever-caustic Mengers is forced to admit at one point that the woman often accused of megalomania is misunderstood. “Here’s what most people don’t get about Barbra: she’s wicked smart,” she says. “She’s also what they call a ”˜perfectionist.’ The whole world’s her stage and she’s constantly adjusting the spotlight”¦ But it’s not for vanity; it’s for artistry. She’s got that rarest of things in performers: she’s got taste.”

“Buyer and Cellar” offers an even more generous-hearted defense. To the Barbra Haters, as exemplified in his boyfriend, Barry, Alex says, “I don’t want to spend my life as a less talented person making fun of more talented people. I don’t want to see someone else’s success as a personal attack on me”¦ When there is someone like her in the world, someone that extraordinary, and I get to spend my days in her presence, the only legitimate response is ”˜thank you.’”

It’s not hard to imagine what Streisand herself might think of the shows. Nothing makes stars’ blood boil more than people making money off of what they consider their hard, treacherous climb to the top. At the very beginning of “Buyer and Cellar,” Alex takes pains to point out, “This is a work of fiction. You know that, right? I mean the premise is preposterous. What I’m going to tell you could not possibly have happened with a person as famous, talented, and litigious as Barbra Streisand.”

Buoyed by its excellent reviews and strong box office, the Rattlestick production of “Buyer and Cellar” is transferring to a commercial run, beginning on June 18 at Greenwich Village’s Barrow Street Theatre. Meanwhile, “I’ll Eat You Last” is breaking box-office records at the Booth Theatre. It’s one of the hottest tickets in town. In any other season, Midler would not only have snagged a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play but probably would have been the front-runner. It’s an indication of just how highly competitive the category is this season that Midler didn’t even make the cut. (Those who did are Cecily Tyson in “Trip to Bountiful”; Laurie Metcalf in “The Other Place”; Holland Taylor in “Ann”; Amy Morton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”; and Kristine Nielsen in “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”)

Too bad. Midler’s acceptance speech would have been a killer, a nod no doubt to both Mengers and Streisand, who are described in the play as “two klutzy gals from New York amidst the lotus blossoms.” The interborough duo, one from the Bronx, the other from Brooklyn, certainly made their presence felt and created a most storied past. And that, after all, is what matters. As the Mengers herself points out, making the deal should never be about the money; stars have enough money. It’s about the career. And Mengers might well have added, the legend. And both “I’ll Eat You Last” and “Buyer and Cellar” are just the latest footnotes in the legend known as Barbra Streisand.