Laurie Beechman Theatre  –  August 10 & 24, Sept. 7, Oct. 5, Nov. 2

Installments of “Simply Streisand” began playing at the Laurie Beechman Theatre this summer, and the series will continue, at least into early fall. Each performance enlists a different mix of singers to pay tribute to Barbra Streisand and sing selections from her wide-ranging repertoire. Between songs, host Phil Geoffrey Bond regales the audience with Barbra lore and shows video clips of the lady herself.

It is possible to consider the Streisand career on two separate and seemingly contradictory tracks—on the first, with reverence and awe for her immense talent and her record of accomplishments; on the other, with amusement (and, perhaps, bemusement) over her unflagging chutzpah and self-regard. Such a paradox is not really that complicated. After all, it’s her famous disregard for tact and her industrial-strength ego that have fueled the legendary career for a half-century. You get a sense that, deep down, Streisand acknowledges some unflattering truths about herself and perhaps embraces them. A telling anecdote from one of the many Streisand biographies describes her being secretly observed watching herself perform on a giant monitor. As the inevitable climax to the song approached, she was said to have barked at the screen: “Sing it, bitch! Sing it!”

I think it’s in part because Bond and company acknowledge this dichotomous aspect of the Streisand legend that “Simply Streisand” works so well. At the performance I saw (September 7), Bond began by describing his first enchantment with the star when he and his mother watched the film of Funny Girl on television over a meal of Domino’s pizza and milk. “The clouds have parted to make way for a new deity!” Bond recalled, with both conviction in his voice and tongue in his cheek. Later, Bond described the intricate details of casting for the film version of Hello, Dolly!, noting that The Greatest Star reportedly never thanked disappointed contender Carol Channing (the stage Dolly) for  the congratulatory bouquet of roses she sent upon learning that the role was Streisand’s. The audience groaned at the alleged loutish gracelessness, but I sensed also a sort of communal cluck: “Oh, that’s just Barbra being Barbra.”

When singers perform songs closely associated with Streisand—especially songs from her early-1960s cabaret repertoire—it helps if they have their own brand of chutzpah-in-overdrive. At the show I saw, some of the performers found ways to meet the challenge, while others fell short.

The two men on the bill fared better than many of the women, which is understandable to me. I’m less tempted to make comparisons regarding vocal timbre and performance style when male voices take on songs of a female standard bearer or vice versa. Marcus Simeone gave a quiet and controlled rendition of Rodgers and Hart’s “Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me,” and his robust upper register was put to good use on “The Love Inside,” a song from Streisand’s 1980 Guilty album that was penned by Barry Gibb, an acknowledged master of pop-rock falsetto. I was also impressed with Stearns Matthews’s take on the medley of Sesame Street’s “Sing (Sing a Song)” by Joe Raposo and “Make Your Own Kind of Music” (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil). Matthews approached “Sing” with fitting simplicity, then met the growing excitement level of “Music” on his own no-nonsense but openhearted terms. The joy he took in the pulsing, infectious melody may not have topped Streisand’s but easily matched it.

As for the women, Ashley Hesse, Shaynee Rainbolt, Colleen McHugh, Sarah Rice, and Lucia Spina performed with varying degrees of success, although Spina took a much too nonchalant approach on two of the star’s signature songs: “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born),” written by Streisand and Paul Williams, and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” by Neil Diamond and Marilyn and Alan Bergman. A handful of female performers gave especially effective turns—some paying homage to the Streisand style and others departing from it. Kristy Cates came closest to capturing the Streisand sensibility singing “Down with Love” (E.Y. Harburg, Harold Arlen) and Hello, Dolly!‘s “Before the Parade Passes By” (Jerry Herman). She even fanned out her hands and wiggled her fingers campily on the latter number. Hilary Kole, on the other hand, put her own jazz-singer stamp on “Lover, Come Back to Me” (Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II), by augmenting the familiar up-tempo Streisand arrangement with an agreeable scat-singing passage. (Kole got terrific support on this number from pianist Mark Hartman, who played ably throughout the evening.)

But Carole J. Bufford proved the evening’s outstanding performer. With an enormous voice and an apparently boundless flair for the dramatic, she had Barbra-level power at her disposal but didn’t try to mimic Streisand.  Her fireball rendition of “What Did I Have That I Don’t Have” (Alan Jay Lerner, Burton Lane), from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, actually seemed to have more in common with Eydie Gormé’s nearly apocalyptic recording of the number. At song’s end, Bufford stretched her arms out toward the audience, as though desperate to be handed a single scrap of affection from a cruel world. She punctuated that gesture by abruptly balling her hands into fists. Toward the end of “I’d Rather Be Blue Over You” (Than Happy With Somebody Else)” by Fred Fisher and Billy Rose, from the film of Funny Girl, Bufford’s voice surprisingly (and thrillingly) modulated upward, and she ended the song in a posture of coy flirtation. This woman makes some bold acting choices when she sings.

Bufford may be no more appropriate, physically speaking, for the role of Fanny Brice in Broadway’s upcoming revival of Funny Girl than Lauren Ambrose, the actress recently tapped for the part. But God knows Bufford could sing the hell out of the challenging Jule Styne/Bob Merrill score. Short of landing that plum gig, I hope she returns for additional installments of “Simply Streisand.”