Hayes Theatre, January 22
7/10
Now here’s a puzzle. The Hayes’ Theatre artistic directors, Richard Carroll and Victoria Falconer, wanted a show celebrating Barbra Streisand, and asked Brittanie Shipway to direct it as well as perform in a cast of four. The creative team Shipway assembled has resulted in a sumptuous stage design from Brendan de la Hay (defined by meticulously swagged fabrics and an avalanche of hydrangeas), superbly lit by Peter Rubie, and with well-chosen songs expertly played by Nicholas Gentile and his band.
The glaring question is why wasn’t the singing as good as everything else?
The show’s subtitled The Greatest Star, which sounds hyperbolic until you try to name another to match Streisand as a titan of recordings, concerts, stage and screen – smashing glass ceilings and sales statistics along the way. In celebrating her, surely nailing the singing should be central, and while no one would expect Shipway, Laura Murphy, Tana Laga’aia or Stellar Perry to match up to one of the last century’s most acclaimed singers, they could have avoided certain pitfalls.
One of the wonders of a singer of Streisand’s stature is an effortlessness that remains in place across her range. She’s a belter who doesn’t shout, and when she goes high, she doesn’t screech: there is no harshness to her top notes. Furthermore, she brings the emotional story of a song to life without resort to overstatement.
Shipway, Murphy and Perry, by contrast, used every opportunity they could to be big and brassy. Like too many female singers in Australian musical theatre, the imperfections in their technique were exposed when they were loud and high simultaneously. Their voices’ inherent appeal was the first casualty of this, and careful calibration of the differentiation between the drama of the songs was another.
Laga’aia’s instincts were sounder, and he sweetly understated Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered), but the pitching of his falsetto was not always accurate. He was better on The Way We Were, which felt like the first time that the show’s freneticism truly unwound, and yet we were already halfway through its 75 minutes’ duration.
Shipway duetted prettily with Gentile on You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, but, even then, they didn’t quite locate the song’s emotional truth. More convincing were Perry and Laga’aia being soulful on Guilty. Murphy was at her best on the Streisand-composed Evergreen (the love theme from A Star Is Born), ably accompanied by Laga’aia on acoustic guitar.
The concluding songs were sung by the full company, the vocal harshness partially disguised when there was such genuine excitement in the air, compounded throughout by band, in which Gentile’s piano was joined by Matt Reid’s keyboards, Michael Napoli’s bass and Sam Evans’ drums. If the singers could trust themselves to back off a little more often, they would instantly sound better, and do infinitely more justice to the Streisand legacy.
Until February 14. Riverside: February 26-28.
https://riversideparramatta.com.au/whats-on/barbra-the-greatest-star/