We Love You Barbra Streisand

Doug Clemons in Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of “Buyer & Cellar” by Jonathan Tolins. Photo by Ross Zentner.

Gay sensibilities – the culture’s fascination with celebrity singers, icons and films — permeate Buyer & Cellar, the expertly staged solo show that closes the Renaissance Theaterworks explorative season at the Next Act Theatre space.

The premise was inspired by Barbra Streisand’s 2010 coffee-table book of photos and text fragments, My Passion for Design. It lavishly celebrated how she turned her sumptuous Malibu mansion into a personal preserve — particularly the “cellar,” her basement mall of shops devoted to the trinkets and crafts her riches allowed her to collect over the years.

From this book and its revelation about Streisand’s private passions, playwright Jonathan Tolins built a stray thought into a play. Spurred by the gay community’s rapture over Streisand he imagined a loquacious out-of-work gay actor named Alex magically employed as the curator for her basement shops.

Impulsively fanciful, Alex envisions intimate interchanges with the notoriously private diva, pretending he is selling her items or sharing weepy moments when they are both down in the dumps. Fantasy? Sure. Alex bounces around like a child in a dollhouse. Despite the bounce of an excellent actor, we spend too much time in this attractive dollhouse, where images of Barbra and the mansion keep us engaged thanks to the attractive lighting, projection, sound and scenic design.

All that actually brings Streisand to life, though she is being worshipped in images and music, not imitated directly (this is not a drag show), but certainly imagined to be there in the way Alex becomes her in his dialogue exchanges with himself.

Barbra’s voice has been part of my life since my college dance-class days. I have long been familiar with the many details of her life, career and romances. The play throws in many historic references to a fabled career using first names or rapid-fire throwaways. Frankly, this may be a problem for some patrons.

When Alex refers to the only movie leading man she didn’t get along with, I automatically knew that was the unnamed Walter Matthau (Hello, Dolly). When playwright Tolins notes the influence on Streisand’s childhood in the sets for Summer Stock (the movie starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly), I knew exactly where he was going. The folks most familiar with Barbra’s career, her peccadillos and her influence on the gay community will have the inside track at this show. It also helps to have an affectionate love for the way some in the gay community move their bodies, roll their eyes and talk about celebrities and themselves.

The production is also a welcome home for its director, Ray Jivoff, for decades a noted theater educator and performer here. He was the artistic director of the Skylight Music Theatre before moving to Door County, where he continues to have a theatrical presence – and he is adept here at keeping the humor and philosophical asides rolling despite the repetitions in the script.

Buyer & Cellar reunites him with one of his favorite actors, Doug Clemons, who has played many kinds of roles here for many companies, but excels at charming the audience with his mannerisms and his ability to deflect our attention with his vocal expertise. Clemons can modify his volume, wink at us, curl and twist his body at will, pretending he is in animated conversation with his boyfriend or with Streisand, posing for effect, whether dancing or sprawling on the couch.

There are clever moments, though, at 100 minutes without intermission, the stage business seems too long. Tolins had experience as a writer when he shaped the show a decade ago and he has a bucket of cultural memories to draw upon for his dialogue. The play also explores the humorous and influential gay sensibilities in the world of the performing arts – and not just in fashion and design. These sensibilities are also empathetic – they open up the way men and women respond to human emotions.

I’m speculating, but it is probably the deeper elements of human contact within a comic fantasy that drew Renaissance Theaterworks, a company known for its feminist leanings and artistic daring across genres, to this play.

Buyer & Cellar opened March 23 and runs through April 13 for Renaissance Theaterworks at the Next Act Theater, 255 S. Water St. For ticket information, including wine Wednesdays, visit https://rtwmke.org/shows/buyer-and-cellar/.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.