arts & life

Funny Gir

Naomi Pfefferman
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

Sebastian
Gerstner

plays five
char-

acters,
including

Barbra
Streisand.

Playwright

Jonathan Tolins

brings Barbra

Streisand to life.

Playright Jonathan Tolins

Buyer & Cellar is the debut

production of Theatre Nova
at the Yellow Barn in Ann
Arbor, and runs March
6-29. $20, or pay what
you can. (734) 635-8450;
theatrenova.org .

've always found Barbra
Streisand a fun character
because she's a combination of
a megastar and my [Jewish] moth-
er:' says playwright Jonathan Tolins, whose play
Buyer & Cellar spotlights Babs' relationship with
an admiring employee. "I feel like there's a part
of Barbra who would be very happy to be shop-
ping at Loehmann's if she weren't recognized:'
Shopping of a very different sort is at the
heart of Buyer & Cellar, a one-man show that
had an acclaimed debut off-Broadway. Set in
a re-creation of the lavish faux mall of shops
Streisand created in real life on her Malibu
estate to display her collectibles, the play — pro-
duced and directed by Daniel C. Walker with
artistic direction by Carla Milarch — launches
the premiere season of Ann Arbor's Theatre
Nova, housed in the renovated Yellow Barn, now
an 85-seat theater. It runs March 6-29.
In the play, Dexter-native Sebastian Gerstner
portrays Streisand and four other characters,
including Alex, a struggling actor who goes
to work as the ersatz proprietor of Streisand's
"mall," where the star arrives to "shop" among
such venues as a vintage clothing store, an
antique doll emporium, a "Gift Shoppe" and
a frozen-yogurt stand. As the star and her
employee bond and clash, the play becomes not
only a celebration of Streisand, but also a medi-
tation on the loneliness of celebrity as well as
the complex relationships people of power share
with their underlings.
Now based in Fairfield, Conn., Tolins, 47, and
a graduate of Harvard University, experienced a
similar dynamic when, as a struggling writer in
Los Angeles, he worked as a temp, an assistant
and even "as a writer for some powerful, rich
people," he says. That "proximity to power" gave
him the "feeling that you're close friends, but
you're not ... and of being on eggshells all of the
time, because [they] often expect you to be able
to read their minds, and they're disappointed or
angry when you can't.
"I find these 'assistant' relationships really
interesting ... because [actually] both sides have
power; he adds. "The employer obviously has
the power of the purse and the ability to fire
someone, but, oddly, often the person in power
really cares about how their employee feels and
thinks about them. They like the illusion that
this is a real friendship, but when push comes to
shove, that can erode very quickly:'
Nevertheless, Tolins says, Buyer & Cellar does
not reduce Streisand's character to a mere cari-
cature of a spoiled diva. "She's hilarious and self-
aware, most of the time he says. "And while she
is this mythological, hard-to-reach star, she also
feels like a Jewish mom.
"What you're laughing at, often, is how she
can be slightly out of touch, but that's a function
of her incredible fame he says. "What the play
tries to do is show that as much as she can be

domineering, she's also someone
diary written by the employee,
"I have a lot of stuff,"
who is a little bit scared and suf-
which was turned down for
Streisand writes in her
fering from the immense fame
publication by the New Yorker
book My Passion for
that she has:'
but caught the eye of a friend,
Design. "Instead of stor-
Tolins met Streisand about 20
who suggested Tolins turn the
ing it just in a basement,
years ago, during a performance
concept into a one-man show.
why not make a street
of his play The Twilight of the
Tolins began reading biogra-
of shops that would
Golds, which was inspired in
phies and watching television
house these things?" The
part by the playwright's own
interviews with Streisand as
shops, inspired by Hector
coming-out-as-gay experience
he penned Buyer & Cellar
Guimard's Art Nouveau
with his Jewish family. She
— even as attorneys warned
designs, include this Louis
complimented him on Twilight,
him that Streisand's famously
XV-esque antique clothing
which at the time she was con-
litigious nature would prevent
store. Among the opulent
sidering adapting into a film
it from ever being produced. "I
garments showcased is an
(she ultimately did not) and
thought I would just use it as a
Irene Sharaff gown that
then offered him a piece of her
writing sample to help me get
Streisand wore when she
Kit Kat bar, which he declined
more work:' he says.
sang "People" in Funny
for fear of making a mess in
Enter David Van Asselt
Girl.
front of the megastar.
of Manhattan's Rattlestick
The inspiration for Buyer &
Playwrights Theater, who had
Cellar first came to the play-
encountered a lawyer's protests
wright in late 2010, when Tolins' husband,
over a previous production, 3C, that allegedly
playwright Robert Cary, brought home a copy
borrowed too much from the 1970s sitcom
of Streisand's coffee-table book My Passion for
Three's Company. "David was willing to take the
Design, a saga of every detail involved in creat-
risk:' Tolins says.
ing her Malibu dream manse. What caught
Turns out Streisand never did sue, nor did
Tolins' eye in particular were the sumptuous
she see Buyer & Cellar although Tolins says
photographs of the imitation shops she'd created he's heard she's asked friends whether the show
in the cellar of a barn on her estate. "Who has a
is offensive. Their answers reportedly have
mall in their basement?" he thought. But he was been positive about the play, and so have the
moved by something childlike, even touching,
reviews, which have noted that it's respectful of
about it: "The feeling of a little girl saying, 'Look
Streisand, Tolins says.
what I made, look what I've acquired, and how
Not that it skirts around Streisand's famous
beautifully I can arrange my stuff: " the play-
foibles, often petulantly noted by Alex's jealous
wright says.
Jewish boyfriend, Barry, who rags on Streisand's
He had the sense that the over-the-top display "sense of self-victimization — portraying herself
— a good deal of it Americana — represented
as a victim when she has had a very blessed
Streisand's declaration to the world that she had
life Tolins says. Streisand herself "has been
overcome her impoverished and emotionally
very open about being extremely controlling, or
deprived childhood in Brooklyn. For Jewish
a perfectionist — tireless in pursuing her own
women of a certain age and background, such a
vision," he adds.
collection indicates "how important it was that
In one sequence, inspired by the star's real-life
they, too, have all the trimmings of the heirloom favorite doll, an automaton that blows bubbles,
American experience," Tablet magazine noted.
Streisand haggles to "buy" the antique as she
At some point while perusing photographs of
recounts the true story of how her only doll as a
Streisand's mall, Tolins turned to his husband
girl was a hot water bottle that she lovingly car-
and said, "How'd you like to be the guy who has
ried around. "I've always been a little scared that
to work down there?"
I was going to get some kind of backlash say-
"I [then] imagined a struggling actor getting
ing that [scene] was an anti-Semitic portrayal,
hired to man the floor and greet the customer,"
because [Barbra's] so concerned about [prices],
Tolins wrote in an essay in The New York Times.
but quite frankly, there are so many famous
"What would the job entail? Would the lady
stories of Barbra haggling in antiques shops and
of the house come down to shop like Marie
with people she's hired that it's just true to who
Antoinette playing shepherdess in her back-
she is. I think that's often true of people who
yard at Versailles? ... How would he fall under
achieve great wealth after being poor as a child:'
Barbra's spell, the way so many of us have for so
Although the play can be critical of her work,
long? How would they change each other?"
mostly voiced by Barry, Tolins stresses that it is
The result was, initially, a fictional short
a "genuinely loving portrait of her:' ❑

March 5 • 2015

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