Streisand powers through an evening of ‘Mem’ries’
Did they know she worked at a Chinese restaurant as a teenager in Brooklyn?
The 74-year-old singer was in an uncharacteristically reflective mood Thursday, as she will be on all nine stops of a tour meant to herald the arrival of her new album of duets called Encore:
Movie Partners Sing Broadway (to be released Aug. 26).
In between there were gold record songs from each of the six decades in her career, one change of costume and a minimally entertaining Israeli mind-reader who seemed to have been a reject from “Israel’s Got Talent.”
Dressed in black sequined trousers and a matching, roomy top, Streisand commanded the stage for a 90-minute first act with pianist Randy Waldman conducting a small instrumental ensemble with three back-up singers.
Whether it’s Il Divo, trumpeter Chris Botti or her honey-voiced son, Jason, the singer likes to sort of turn the stage over to someone else for a few minutes.
Yep, Lior Suchard joined her onstage for a few tiresome minutes, drawing a lucky lady from the audience to help him with a mind-reading trick involving a cell phone and a bunch of numbers.
For the second act, Streisand emerged in a billowing, dove-grey gown, an enormous outbreak of jewelry around her neck and a nearly floor-length lavalier descending from the gown’s empire waist.
[...] if there was one special moment in three hours filled with special moments, it was in the supposedly unplanned final encore, Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.”
Somehow, Streisand turned a massive hockey rink into the Village Vanguard, the Bon Soir supper club or the hungry i. It was simple, intimate and pure.
David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle.