The Music...The Mem'ries...The Magic! Streisand at the Staples Center

I have now seen Barbra Streisand perform live four times over the past twenty-two years. I sometimes joke that I always go to all of her farewell tours, but given her age now (74), I cannot be certain that she won’t give up touring at some point. She still seems to enjoy the engagement with the audience, and she always seems to find new ways to interpret and present and contextualize the songs she performs. The audiences show their appreciation loudly and perhaps too often, so she has to be aware of how much beloved she remains. However, I fear that at some point she might decide to retire from public singing and I won’t have seen her one last time before that occurs. So when the chance to purchase tickets for another tour arose, I logged on and purchased as quickly as possible. I can’t say I got the best seats in the house, but given that the top ticket prices could almost rival a month’s rent, I got the best I could afford.

Tuesday night’s performance at the Staples Center was easily the most emotional of her concerts that I have seen (including her triumphant return to touring back in 1994 at what was then known as the Arrowhead Pond). Lots of people will remark on how her voice has lost some of its strength, but I cannot imagine any other 74-year-olds who have the ability to master notes the way that she can. And her selection of material to cover during the evening was unparalleled. She knows her fans are deeply familiar with her catalog, and she continually surprises us with choices that amaze us and resonate with us.

The first half began with the song that everyone now expects her to sing at some point in the show: “The Way We Were.” Not many performers would begin with a song so closely identified with them, but she walked out to raucous cheers and quickly dispensed with it as if to suggest that there were other, just-as-exciting songs to come. And she then followed up with a song from A Star Is Born. No, not “Evergreen”—that came later in a lovely duet with Babyface (Kenny Edmonds). Instead, she sang “Everything,” the song in the film that shows her character’s desire to be a success at every aspect of life. It’s a stunning choice, one I’ve never heard her perform outside of the film, and it was a magnificent choice to set off a series of unexpected “deep cuts.” It also gave her the chance for some self-deprecating humor, revealing that she knows the reputation she has for being a perfectionist. (It didn’t help that someone left out the straw from the cup of tea she always has on stage. That was quickly remedied during intermission. Or else...)

She could easily spend 2½ hours just singing her greatest hits. That would fill more than just one night, and everyone would feel satisfied. However, instead, she mines the archives of the thousands of songs she has recorded and picks ones that fit within the narrative that she constructs for each show. For example, rather than sing “All Is Fair in Love” from the album that had to be retitled Barbra Streisand featuring The Way We Were so as not to confuse the record-buying public, she instead did a fresh take on “Being at War with Each Other” accompanied by images of the violence and protests that have become such a part of our culture. It was a daring restaging of a song about a couple having relationship trouble, and it was a powerful moment.

This tour is ostensibly a tribute to Streisand’s albums that have reached Number One on the charts. She’s done this feat in each of the past six decades, an unparalleled achievement and one not likely to be surpassed any time soon. It’s also a bit of a promotional tour for her upcoming release, Encore, even though she only did two numbers from that album in the second act. The emphasis is truly upon the musical journey on which she has taken us since her start in the early 1960s. So the first act includes such favorites as “Stoney End” and “Woman in Love” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” which she sings just as beautifully as a solo. She also shared many stories throughout the evening about her career, including one about how a disc jockey in Kentucky spliced together hers and Neil Diamond’s individual performances of the song and made it into a hit record. She also joked about her constant struggles with the record company regarding the cover art for her albums, including one where the bump in that famous nose was airbrushed out of the image and another where she wanted a shot of her facing away from the camera and looking out to the horizon (People). She lost the first battle but won the second. Such are the small gems of her long career that you get to discover when you attend a concert.

For me, the emotional highlight of the first act was her rendition of “Being Alive,” the first of three songs by Stephen Sondheim she would perform. Sung by a man in the theatrical productions of Company, this song gets completely reconceptualized by having it performed by a mature female singer with a history of romances both successful and failed rather than a younger man struggling with his inability to commit to a relationship with one person. It’s a show piece for her, one which she frequently uses in her concerts to demonstrate that she truly is, as she described herself once in the 1960s, “an actress who sings.”

The first act ended with one of her more personal songs, “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” from the movie Yentl. Given her challenges in getting the film made—and her deep affection for the father who passed away when she was such a young girl—the song takes on greater emotional heft each time I hear it. I’m not generally a fan of this song, honestly, and I didn’t particularly enjoy the staging of it during the movie, but I can’t deny the power with which she displays the rawness of the emotions she has when she sings it.

We had a brief intermission during which two friends and I kept gushing about how much we were in awe of her singing and how much we were enjoying the concert. The youngest of us, who is in his early 30s, had never seen her perform live and shared with us that this was the greatest performance he had ever seen. By anyone. Ever. I reminded him that he needed to start going to see people like Streisand. One day, when she has retired, he will be glad that he did.

Act II began with a charming rendition of “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Streisand was joined on stage by Seth McFarlane, who sings the song with her on the new album. It’s a delightful song made all the more charming by having them sing it without irony. Ever the liberal activist, Streisand used the song as an opportunity to speak against climate change and to encourage the audience to dream of saving our world from destruction. McFarlane has a lovely singing voice, and even though he might not be Streisand’s equal in vocal prowess, their duet served as a sweet reminder of how well she can match her partner’s range.

A duet of “Who Can I Turn to?” featuring the video image of Anthony Newley must have taken a lot of careful planning. I’m not sure from where the footage came, but she managed to keep the tempo of the song consistent with Newley’s performance. It’s a shame that she didn’t record more duets during the first half of her career with people like him; their theatricality complements each other’s vocal stylings quite well. At least she’s made up for this by recording a series of duets albums, and she’s included some surprising partners along the way. When Jamie Foxx joined her on “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music, the crowd erupted. Foxx has a stellar voice, and his prowess clearly challenged Streisand to reach the upper range of her voice. It was stunning to see how these two staggeringly different singers can work so well together.

Streisand revisited two songs from Funny Lady, a film she didn’t want to make but was contractually obligated to do. She selected “Isn’t This Better” and “How Lucky Can You Get?” to represent the movie’s plot, and even if she were a little fuzzy on the details of where “Isn’t This Better?” fits into the film’s plot, the emotional heft of both songs was just as strong last night as it was in the 1975 film. I hope that she decides to revisit some of her other less-favored projects in the future. Perhaps she will address some of these in the autobiography she claims to be writing. That book is sure to right some perceived wrongs from a long career.

For me, the two greatest highlights of the evening occurred during the second half of the show. She took a song that has been performed too many times by too many bad performers and that has been given “definitive” performances by some of the greatest singers of the Broadway stage, “Losing My Mind” from Follies, and managed to draw out the most powerful emotional response of the night. I was in tears throughout most of the song. I know others, including dear, close friends of mine, who would argue that others have sung the song better, but I think anyone who puts her version of this song against the others would be hard pressed to disagree that she managed to show greater depth and clarity in the lines about the impact of lost and unrequited love. It was a show-stopper, and I didn’t know how she would top it.

She came mighty close with another song from A Star Is Born, “With One More Look at You.” In the film, the song encapsulates Esther’s emotions over the loss of her husband, John Norman Howard (played by Kris Kristofferson) and caps the film (paired with “Watch Closely Now”) in a powerful way. The video behind her performance on Tuesday showed the arc of the characters’ relationship throughout the film. However, even without the accompanying images, Streisand’s selection of this song was a powerful gift to those who have seen every movie and listened to every song and watched every television special. She picked a song that would truly reach those fans who could instantly recognize and engage with the emotions she brings to it.

The show ended with a powerful grouping of songs designed to showcase how well Streisand can sing despite all of the harping from her detractors. I agree (and have said before) that her voice is huskier and perhaps even raspier than in the past, but after listening to the latest rendition of “Children Will Listen,” the third and final Sondheim song of the night, I would still rather hear Streisand than almost anyone who populates the radio airwaves these days. Arguably her greatest song, “People” has managed to change with each performance and her understanding of it has certainly deepened. She told the audience that she initially questioned if people who didn’t need people weren’t actually the luckiest people in the world. You can see her point—and that must have taken some strong will for a teenager to question Jules Styne over a lyric—but her rendition last night shows that she gets it now. The last song of the night, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” is one that she’s been singing for more than fifty years, but in this charged political environment, her choice of it to end her show reveals the depth of her commitment to the Demoncratic Party and its principles. You have to admire the consistency with which she has used both her music and her status as an entertainer to champion the causes in which she believes.

The applause at the end of the night was so strong that she had to return several times to take bows. She didn’t add any encores, but even without additional songs, the audience was reluctant to leave even when the lights came on. Some of them had been quite vocal during the evening, shouting at rather inopportune times. I think they get to see her so rarely and just love her so much that they cannot help themselves. When a beloved star like Streisand goes on tour these days, the crowds still show up. She might not sell as many records as the twentysomethings who dominate music nowadays, but the appreciation for what she has achieved and what she still represents is ever present at one of her performances.

It took almost two more hours for my friends and I to recover from the show. We walked around downtown Los Angeles (DTLA, as it’s called now) and had drinks at a couple of bars, neither of which I’d ever seen before, Bar Mattachine and Precinct. There was a lot of going over of the highlights. There were a few criticisms here and there—I personally could have done without the “mentalist,” Lior Suchard, whose act ground the first half of the show to a halt—and a few reconsiderations of earlier criticisms. I have no doubt that such conversations were taking place all over the city by those who attended and those who wished they had attended. It was a magical night, one which I will not soon forget.