Review:Peach towels and tales of upholstered suites being shipped transatlantically helped to feed the diva mythology which has defined Barbra Streisand.
Her legendary stage fright was palpable during her opening gambit when those fulsome Streisand vocals tiptoed around Starting Here, Starting Now with the tentativeness of a novice (understandably) unschooled in the intricacies of vocal projection in a mud-soaked meadow in Kildare.
Appropriately enough, she launched headlong into Ray Charles's Come Rain or Come Shine, a sop to those who had trudged across the lunar-like terrain of Celbridge's Castletown House, buffered by a full orchestra well versed in the fine art of melodrama.
Long before her voice had found its own comfort zone, Streisand tackled her self-penned paean to true love, Evergreen, and before we could utter A Star is Born, she was surrounded by four tenors.
In truth, the venue was too big, the crowd too dispersed to build atmosphere until well into the second half of her performance, which bore all the hallmarks of a Vegas-style cabaret show and was at a remove from the kind of rambunctious set-list that's fit for outdoor consumption in monsoon conditions.
Anxious to garner her audience's affections, Streisand tackled the emotionally elaborate The Way We Were prematurely, when her voice was not yet agile enough to handle its pathos.
Much later, after she'd put a swathe of Broadway standards through their paces (from South Pacific's Somewhere to The Phantom of the Opera's Music of the Night and Funny Girl), those Streisand vocals ignited beneath What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?, burning it up with all the passion and range that's set her apart as a supreme vocalist and interpreter ever since her 1962 Broadway debut, I Can Get It For You Wholesale.
Forget musical dalliances with MOR-fiends. Babs's heart is lodged unapologetically in the Broadway of Don't Rain On My Parade and in the Chaplinesque tragedy of Smile (Though Your Heart Is Breaking), aided and abetted unashamedly by one of the biggest autocues (of truly Super Bowl proportions) ever witnessed on this side of the Atlantic. She came, she plamásed us with tales of her love of Guinness stew, and we swallowed them whole. Then again, this gal didn't slay Broadway and Hollywood for nothing, did she?
