(Sylviane Gold’s article appeared in The New York Times, 7/8; via Pam Green.)
“The idea was too much fun to let go.” This is how, in his program note, Jonathan Tolins explains how he came to write “Buyer & Cellar,” the one-man show at Penguin Rep in Stony Point through July 24.
That idea, as theatergoers across the country have learned since the comedy’s Off Broadway premiere in 2013, was to invent Alex More, a wry, underemployed actor who characterizes himself as broke, uninsured and wondering why he ever left Wisconsin. Then Mr. Tolins invented his day job: tending the bibelots and souvenirs stored in the basement of Barbra Streisand’s Malibu house.
The Streisand basement isn’t like yours or mine, however. It’s been transformed into a museum-like street of shops stocking her dolls, her antiques, her old clothes, all her collectibles. Ms. Streisand chronicled these carefully curated displays in her 2010 coffee-table book, “My Passion for Design,” and Mr. Tolin’s imagination did the rest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/nyregion/me-and-barbra-and-a-mall-full-of-goodies.html