Word: streisand
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PERFORMER: BARBRA STREISAND...
...Barbra Streisand doesn't sing, she emotes. She ascends octaves with the zeal of a new initiate in a 12-step program. She deconstructs melodies and remakes them in her own image (she once asked Stephen Sondheim to rewrite Send in the Clowns). She tends to avoid singing one note when three or eight will do. All her emotions are bigger than life -- bigger than the afterlife if you include On a Clear Day You Can See Forever -- and every sentiment seems to end in multiple exclamation marks...
...other words, Streisand and Broadway are a perfect match. She launched her career in 1962 with a debut in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale and springboarded to the movies after her starring role in 1964's Funny Girl. In 1985 she scored an enormous success with The Broadway Album, a collection of songs by such composers as Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein. Her non-Broadway hits have never been very credible, and they've proved to have the shelf life of sugary foodstuffs on convenience-store shelves. It's hard to listen to You Don't Bring...
Back to Broadway is full of songs that are crafted to stand the test of time -- and to some extent already have. Streisand's voice glides through Johnny Mandel's elegant orchestration of Some Enchanted Evening like a glamorous tourist passing through the lobby of a grand hotel. She follows that up with a no-frills version of Everybody Says Don't (from Anyone Can Whistle) performed as an unabashed, up-with-people showstopper. When Streisand hollers, "I insist on miracles, if you do them/ Miracles -- nothing to them!" a listener is compelled to believe that this amazing woman...
Doesn't everyone love to find out from The New York Times that Woody Allen won't take a shower in a stall that has a drain in the middle of the floor? These days, television movies go into production before the smoke clears. Barbra Streisand and Sharon Stone roam the corridors of power. And politicians are starting to buy infomercials to sell their wares like so many cans of spray-on hair. Most people wouldn't consider these positive trends, but they're wrong. Dead wrong...