(The problem evaporated later in the show.) An early highlight was the tender “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” (Neil Diamond, Marilyn & Alan Bergman). Unfortunately, much of the first set of the Saturday show was plagued by some sort of sound-system difficulty that made the music sound tinny, at least where I was sitting. The first half featured songs from Streisand’s number-one albums over the last six decades the second highlighted selections from her upcoming duets album, “Encore,” which consists of musical-theatre songs performed with movie stars who sing. For someone who has described herself as lazy, the Queen Bee found herself in a hive of industriousness. The star only briefly left the stage during the show, which ran well over 2-1/2 hours, counting a 20-minute intermission. Although at the show I attended she had special guest performers (Jamie Fox and Patrick Wilson), they were duet partners, not soloists. And she was generous with the number of songs she sang and the detailed anecdotes she shared. She performed with a medium-size band with few strings.
Now she’s back again, with a more compact itinerary: a one-month, 10-date mini-tour of North America called “Barbra: The Music… The Mem’ries… The Magic!” I caught her on the second night of a two-show engagement at Brooklyn’s enormous Barclays Center.Ĭo-directed by Streisand and Richard Jay-Alexander, the show was a somewhat scaled-back affair-meant, perhaps, to be a compromise between her customary extravaganzas and something more in character with the Village Vanguard show. After the Village Vanguard show, she returned to arenas and stadiums, with a string of shows in 20, including her first performances ever in Israel. Once talent like Streisand’s has been loosed on the world, there’s no luring it back to an enclave (especially when the owner of that talent loves to buy beautiful things that gigs at the Duplex wouldn’t exactly pay for). In 2009, she gave a nod to that distant but essential part of her resumé by giving (and filming) a performance at the Village Vanguard in support of her CD “Love Is the Answer.” That event allowed one to imagine a parallel Barbra Streisand universe, one in which Broadway and Hollywood had never happened for her-where she had, instead, remained a New York singer, a household name only to an enthusiastic group of avid cabaret-goers.
But that, of course, is how her career began-in such small clubs as the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel, where she became a sensation while en route to becoming a legend.
It’s been several decades since Barbra Streisand had any real connection to the world of New York cabaret.
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