Profile
Photos
Comments
Streisand Upends the Social Order, Briefly
By Ben
Sisario
When Barbra Streisand sings,
all fans are equal.
Or so it seemed on Saturday night at the Village Vanguard, the tiny West
Village jazz club where she was performing for the first time in 48 years. There
were the two busloads of ticket-lottery winners. Ms. Streisand’s celebrity
BFF’s, like Donna Karan and Nicole Kidman. And, ensconced in a side table, Bill,
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.
All passed by the same sidewalk gawkers and sat in rapt attention throughout
Ms. Streisand’s set, then mingled casually in the basement club once the lights
went up, Oscar winner chatting with schoolteacher and former president alike.
Concerts by Ms. Streisand are rare, but the scale of Saturday’s show was
exceptional enough to briefly upend the natural social order of celebrity
events. To promote her new album, “Love Is the Answer,” which will be released
on Tuesday, she was booked for one night at the Vanguard, legal capacity 123 —
absurdly small for an artist who has sold 71 million albums. The scarcity was
made more acute by the fact that 74 seats had been given away through online fan
contests, and video cameras would be eating up some of the little space
remaining.
The ticket was so impossibly hot that a satellite party for spillover
V.I.P.’s was arranged uptown at the Waldorf-Astoria, where a live video feed was
shown to a few dozen people, including former Mayor David Dinkins, various
Streisand family members and employees of Ms. Streisand’s record company, Sony.
In the elegant Louis XVI room, where baroque chandeliers reflected the
flickering table candles, a voice from one table erupted during Ms. Streisand’s
first song, “Here’s to Life”: “Oooh, is that Sarah Jessica Parker?” (Indeed it
was, front and center.)
For a concert at, say, the far roomier Madison Square Garden, much of the
Waldorf crowd could count on a plum seat. But access for the Vanguard went
mostly to average fans from around the world, some of whom said they had never
been able to afford a Streisand ticket before. But tonight they were the stars,
from their seats in earshot of the Clintons to the unusually strict security
implemented on their behalf.
The contest winners were gathered at the Sony building in Midtown Manhattan
on Saturday afternoon and screened with metal detectors. They had to leave all
cell phones, cameras and other electronic devices in their hotel room, or
forfeit their tickets. Once aboard the buses, they traded “Funny Girl” stories
and shrugged at the security, which also included a paper wristband and stamp in
red ink.
“I thought it was like seeing the pope,” said Shari Hansen, a 58-year-old
hospital transplant coordinator in Denver who said she was leaving her husband
behind on their anniversary to attend the show. “They could have given me any
kind of restriction, anything at all, and I still would have been here.”
The measures were being taken to protect not only Ms. Streisand but also the
fans themselves, some of whom have been targets of harassment online ever since
the winners were announced two weeks ago.
One fan, Reneé Cole, a 25-year-old actress in Brooklyn, was called a “rat” on
the barbrastreisand.com message boards for the crime of not pre-ordering a copy
of “Love Is the Answer” with her contest entry. (No purchase was required.) And
Kevin Keyser, a casting director in Orlando, Fla., who entered the “cutest pet
photo contest,” said he received rude Facebook messages about his dog, a
Chihuahua named Punks.
“People said, ‘Your dog looks like a deer on Xanax,’” Mr. Keyser said. “It
was shocking that people would directly send me a message to say that.”
When Ms. Cole, a slender blonde wearing a black dress she had made herself,
stepped off the bus by the Vanguard entrance, flash bulbs burst from the crowd
on the sidewalk, and at the request of a videographer behind the police
barricade, she took a twirl in her new dress on her way through the door.
Onstage, Ms. Streisand alternated between lighthearted banter, some of it
about the club’s close quarters — “It’s hard to have stage fright when there’s
hardly any stage” — and gentle performances of 12 songs, including standards
from “Love Is the Answer” and Streisand immortals like “Evergreen” and “The Way
We Were.”
The fans, inside and outside the club, were rapturous.
Larry Sayoc, 40, who works in real estate, did not get into the show, but
waited next door at Rivoli Pizza, where he pressed his right ear against the
wall and stood transfixed for 20 minutes. “I could hear a bit of ‘The Way We
Were,’” he said, beaming.
Michel Filion, 49, a photographer from Montreal, was luckier. He had won the
ticket lottery, and said he was wearing the same cherry-red blazer that he wore
when he saw Ms. Streisand in Auburn Hills, Mich., in 1994. He managed to swipe a
paper coffee cup that his idol had left behind on stage.
“I don’t know, I guess I’ll bronze it,” Mr. Filion said, adding that he
already had a scrap of carpet in his house from another theater where Ms.
Streisand had once played.
By the time the show ended, at around 9:30 p.m., the old order was restored
somewhat; the contest winners were free to go about their evenings, with no
buses to spirit them away from the hoi polloi to which they were now returning.
Reached later in the evening, Mr. Keyser was still gasping for words to describe
his ecstasy.
And the Waldorf suite became a reception for all the V.I.P.’s, Sarah Jessica
Parkers and Barry Dillers and James Brolins included — and contest winners
excluded. Aided by two bars and a spread of catered desserts, the reception
crowd mingled and gabbed coolly into the evening, until around 11, when whispers
of “she’s in the room” made their way through the suite.
Guided by her longtime publicist, Ken Sunshine, Ms. Streisand began to make
her way through the party, and guests of all levels of fame lined up excitedly
along her expected path, waiting with smiles to pay their respects to the woman
who makes everybody a fan.
Right before Ms. Streisand arrived, Tamir Hendelman, her pianist, said: “It
doesn’t matter if you’re Clinton or the guy who won the contest — she’s singing
to you.”