This is true: Barbra Streisand has a boutique mall in the barn basement of her Malibu home.
There’s a shop for antique shoes. Another for antique clothes. There’s “Bee’s Doll Shop,” chock-full of, well, dolls. There’s even a sweet shop.
This is not true: The mall has a shopkeeper.
But playwright Jonathan Tolins, who learned about the basement bonanza in Streisand’s book, “My Passion for Design,” found the concept to be so funny that he wrote a short story about it. And that evolved into a one-man play, “Buyer & Cellar,” Live Theatre Workshop’s current offering.
Tolins has conjured up an out-of-work actor who is employed by Babs to see to the customers. Of course, she is the only customer.
“The idea was too much fun to let go,” Tolins wrote in a 2013 New York Times article. “The premise wasn’t just absurd; it had the potential to be poignant and meaningful. … There was something touching and childlike about the pride and care with which Barbra shows off her possessions.”
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Sabian Trout directs the piece and she has cast the perfect actor: Keith Wick, who has charm and a knack for comedy and depth.
While it’s a one-man play, there are many characters. Wick will also portray Oprah Winfrey, Arthur Laurents, James Brolin, Beatrice Arthur and, natch, Babs herself.
“Buyer & Cellar” seduced critics across the country.
“It goes down as easily and tastily as lemon sorbet, and the only pain in your stomach it creates is the kind that comes from laughing too hard,” said the New York Times.
“Tolins has plenty to say about the way fame and money warp values,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in praising the comedy.
And this from The Hollywood Reporter: “Unabashed, confident in its broadness of brush … and with an unerring command of its comic and pathetic effects, ‘Buyer & Cellar’ is the sort of heartwarmingly savage show the whole family can enjoy.”
