Review: BUYER & CELLAR at TheaterWorks

Let's admit it: Theater is sanctioned voyeurism, offering us a glimpse into lives we might not otherwise see. Often the payoff is in empathy, all bound up with the guilty pleasure of sitting in the dark watching other people in conflict. In BUYER & CELLAR at TheaterWorks in Hartford, empathy takes a dive while the guilty pleasure is juiced up by the addition of celebrity watching-sort of.

Out of work actor Alex More (played by Tom Lenk) takes a peculiar job to make ends meet: he's hired to staff the subterranean mall of cute shops Barbra Streisand has built in the basement of her mansion, to display her stuff, and so she can pretend to shop when the mood strikes. She's the only and very occasional customer; otherwise the place is empty. It's lonely work, dusting the dolls and antiques, until suddenly it's not and Barbra shows up expecting to have her whims indulged.

We never actually see the great songstress (though we're told that when the chandelier overhead glows, she's in the room) except in 30 minutes of looping, grainy film clips projected onto the small set before the show starts. Lenk tells us straight off he's not going to impersonate her: that field's just too crowded. But for nearly 110 minutes, without intermission, he works hard to generate sufficient charm and storytelling moxie to hold our attention. We hear him recount (and voice) encounters with a variety of characters: Sharon, the gruff, misshapen maven who hires him; James Brolin, Streisand's husband; his own boyfriend at home.

The underground ersatz mall is real, apparently, and documented in the 300 page full-color book My Passion for Design Streisand published in 2010 and which features much of her own photography.

Lenk's verve is admirable: he succeeds in getting the audience on his side immediately with a brief sing-a-long. The set is lush despite its miniature size, and the writing clever, so the evening doesn't drag; but for this reviewer, the whole enterprise tastes more of cotton candy than nourishment. Playwright Jonathan Tolins has taken care to steer clear of anything that might draw a libel suit, and while the character he creates has the chutzpah to spar with the star he serves, the text doesn't truly plumb what's deeply weird about this story and about our cultural use and misuse of celebrities. If you're someone who might feel "a kind of rapture when standing in front of the 'People' dress," as Alex More does, this show may delight; if not, you might be less entertained.

BUYER & CELLAR runs through Valentine's Day in Hartford; as a one-actor, one-set show, it's likely to run in many small venues around the country for some time to come.

photo by Lenny Nagler

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