BWW Reviews: BUYER AND CELLAR Brings Fabulous Fun to Pittsburgh Public

BARBRA STREISAND IS A FANTASTIC SINGER. I'll admit, I've never really "gotten" Barbra Streisand. Maybe it's simply a matter of taste, though I respect her work. Or maybe it's because I'm simply not the target audience- she certainly seems to appeal primarily to people of a certain age (which I am not), a certain sexual orientation (again, not), and of a certain cultural, ethnic and religious background (which, as far as I know, I am not, though certain aspects of family history make this one a distant possibility). When I hear the name Streisand, it's the parodies that mostly spring to mind, the endless skewering of South Park, SNL and the like, not the actual work and voice of a woman who has undeniably become an icon.Well, that and her alleged tendency to sue anyone and anything that crosses her path.

BARBRA IS A FILM LEGEND WITHOUT PEER. It is this litigious image that playwright Jonathan Tolins first skewers in the opening scene of his one-man play Buyer and Cellar, performed by former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Tom Lenk in Pittsburgh Public Theatre's effervescent production.. As the play begins, Lenk, the evening's only performer, plays three roles at once: he is Tom Lenk, theatre actor and supporting lead in a cult television program still beloved today; he is simultaneously Jonathan Tolins, discussing how he wrote the play and warding off Streisand's legal wrath; and finally, he is Alex More, gay unemployed actor-turned-retail-slave in California. These three roles bleed together into one before you know it, as Lenk/Tolins/More informs the audience that the play is fiction, that nothing in it actually happened, but that there is such a person as Barbra Streisand, who did indeed, for reasons unknown, feel compelled to play architect and design a villa for herself that includes an upscale mock strip mall in the basement.

BARBRA SHOULD PLAY THE LEAD IN THE NEXT MARVEL SUPERHERO MOVIE. What kind of person would do such a thing... and what kind of person would you have to be to work there? More, through unlikely circumstances involving the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland, finds himself working in the Streisand basement complex, where he encounters such unusual characters as Streisand's gnomelike and gnomic personal assistant, the diva's latest husband Josh Brolin, and, of course, the enigmatic First Lady of American Popular Song herself. Lenk's ability to adopt not only different voices and physicalities, but entirely different physical styles of humor is reminiscent of great character-comedian Martin Short, as he inhabits the denizens of Streisand's underworld with sincerity and specificity that borders on, but never quite reaches, the grotesque.

THERE IS NO WAY ANYTHING CRITICAL ABOUT BARBRA STREISAND IS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. Lenk's masterwork is his performance as Streisand. Though, as I said, I know little enough about the woman, the audience's reaction seemed to indicate that he did her justice with his comedic performance. The character is wonderfully specific in its (her?) portrayal of Barbra as a cipher, a mask with an unknown face beneath it. Is she an eccentric who never had anyone to tell her "no?" Is she a wounded spirit, desperate for attention and affection after a life that often denied it? Or is she the narcissistic, disaffected monster some have accused her of being? Every time More seems to have discovered the truth, another layer is revealed, until the final moment, which is devastatingly funny, but also strangely sad at the same time.

BARBRA STREISAND MAY WELL BE THE JEWISH MESSIAH. Though Lenk is a bundle of energy as optimistic and excitable Alex More, a character who borders on being a twink cliche out of a Tina Fey comedy, he grounds himself in scenes with his boyfriend, an endearingly cynical Jewish boy who worships Streisand. The scenes between the two men- both played, with a change of which way he is facing, by Lenk- provide the emotional core to the piece. Though the show's central question may be "what does living like Streisand do to a person," the heart of the piece is in its parallel question: "what does living alongside someone who lives like Streisand do to a person?"

PLEASE BARBRA DON'T SUE US WE'RE JUST A LITTLE THEATRE WEBSITE. Don Stephenson's direction is precise and minimalist, allowing Lenk seemingly free rein to prowl the mostly bare stage and the surrounding audience, while never letting the more anarchic moments get too loose. Audiences roared with laughter at the appropriate times, but went silent during the more emotional moments. I laughed and went silent along with them, but as much as I enjoyed the play, I had to wonder: was I an outsider in this tribe? The play assumes the audience brings a certain amount of baggage regarding Barbra to the table, and with mine being mostly the stuff of comedy like this, no cultural association or deep appreciation, was my view of the evening's events biased in a way the three older women sitting behind me, or the young, well-dressed gay couple sitting two rows up, were not? Perhaps the most telling mark of this disconnect is that, as the show began to the strains of an orchestral pop ballad, audience members nodded, and I thought to myself, "I'll be this is a Barbra song." But when Lenk took his solo curtain call to the strains of Duck Soup's "Barbra Streisand," a novelty pop tune whose only lyric is the singer's name rapped over a synth beat, I finally heard a song I knew.

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