Now playing at Oregon Contemporary Theater, Buyer & Cellar, an award-winning Off Broadway hit by Jonathan Tolins, is truly exceptional. This one-man show, brilliantly performed by the endearing J. Conrad Frank, is a comedy so good that it makes you want to cry.
The script, the acting and the direction by OCT Artistic Director Craig Willis at the very top of his game, conspire to deliver a witty, emotional, thought provoking experience. Tolin’s dialogue is eloquent and the plot is expertly crafted.
Buyer and Cellar is a cryptic title until we learn that the buyer is a super rich celebrity and the cellar is a basement. The sole character, Alex, is a gay unemployed actor with little hope of landing a role. So he takes a bizarre job at a Malibu estate as curator of a museum in a huge basement. The person who created this museum in the form of a shopping mall that houses her precious memorabilia is none other than Barbra Streisand. Barbra! A living goddess to Alex.
Now, it’s true that Barbra really has a museum under her barn. She even wrote a book about it. But the entire action of the play is fantasy. Alex portrays all the roles, identifying each character with a simple gesture or body posture. Barbra, so unpredictable, is a powerful presence.
Despite their differences, with Alex enduring a daily 85 minute commute in a beat-up Jetta, and Barbra hanging with the gods on Mount Olympus, they seem to form a friendship. For a while. Along the way Alex learns a lot about himself and his place in an aspirational society, and we learn just as much about Barbra, well, the fictional Barbra. In any case, Alex and Barbra are equally enlightening.
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