Profile: Barbra Streisand - the evergreen diva whose Irish concert debut costs a king's ransom: She's an Oscar winner, gay icon, liberal champion and queen of the show tune, so why wouldn't we pay big money to see the 65-year-old star, asks Donald Clarke.
What can you get for €551.75 these days? Well, it's not quite sufficient to secure a PlayStation 3, and you're not going to book a holiday anywhere more exotic than the Isle of Man with that sort of sum. But fear not. That exact amount will get you a ticket to see a sexagenarian entertainer sing a few show tunes and deliver some patter in a big house in Kildare. Just the one ticket, mind. If you want to bring a friend, you will have to write out a cheque for a four-figure amount.
The news that the most expensive tickets for Barbra Streisand's concert in Castletown House on July 14th - her first ever in Ireland - are to top €500 gives us cause to muse upon the puzzling economics of the entertainment industry. Streisand, now 65, has not had a hit single for decades. Indeed, the blend of show tunes and middle-of-the-road bellowing she essays has not been properly fashionable for close to half a century. Yet the indomitable Brooklyn diva still feels able to demand the price of a plasma television to hear her assert the luckiness of people who need people. The Arctic Monkeys, who are asking just £28.50 (€41.81) for their forthcoming gig in Manchester, must be scratching their little heads raw with bewilderment.
One obvious explanation for this apparent irregularity is that Streisand attracts the type of older, better-heeled punter who is likely to have a few hundred euro lying idly in the glove compartment of his or her BMW. The Monkeys can only extract so much loot from students and the unemployed.
TRUE ENOUGH, BUTthe robust appeal of Streisand has always asked difficult questions of zeitgeist analysts. Since her emergence in the early 1960s, the singer has stubbornly - and sometimes bravely - stood up for progressive, liberal causes. As long ago as 1963, when she was just 21, she sang for John F Kennedy and has, ever since, been the first person right-wing blowhards set upon when they become tired of walloping Jane Fonda. For all that, her art has been extraordinarily conservative. The angry Republican talk-radio hosts may hate her politics, but they would have to acknowledge that, in the years following the emergence of rock'n'roll, she ensured that there was always a corner of the album charts at home to nice songs with proper tunes.
Streisand is the biggest-selling female recording artist in US history. She has won two Oscars and, for close to a decade, could demand larger fees than any other female actor in Hollywood. But she has never really been in vogue. Who were all those people buying her records and going to her movies? The most visible portion of her audience has always been its gay component. Like Bette Davis and Judy Garland, Streisand exhibits that awkward, unprocessed class of charisma that appeals to people who, themselves, sometimes feel excluded by rigid societal norms. Whereas many pink icons gained their status as they aged and suffered, Streisand has had a dialogue with the homosexual community since the very earliest days of her career. Raised in humble circumstances by her mother, who was widowed in the war years, Streisand first found work as a nightclub singer in one of Greenwich Village's many gay bars.
This was 1960 and her act, showcasing her emotionally open delivery, had been honed to suit the environment by her boyfriend Barry Dennen. (Many years later, solidifying Streisand's connection to her homosexual fans, Dennen announced that he was gay.) Her first break into the mainstream came when she landed a small role in the Broadway musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale. The show was not a huge hit, but Streisand's turn was sufficiently impressive for her to secure a recording contract with Columbia Records. The Barbra Streisand Album, featuring such standards as Cry Me a Riverand Happy Days are Here Again, went on to win two Grammys and is still selling today.
It is often forgotten that in the 1960s, that era of sustained grooviness, the soundtrack to The Sound of Musicwas frequently found ahead of the Beatles and the Stones in the album charts. There remained a sizeable following for old-fashioned performers belting out old-fashioned tunes and Streisand fast became a figurehead for the MOR counter-revolution. In 1968 she appeared in the film version of Funny Girl, a musical based around the life of the entertainer Fanny Brice, and, after winning the Oscar for best actress, found herself firmly established as a major box-office draw.
If you are never quite in fashion, then you can never quite go out of fashion, and Streisand, undoubtedly a talented comic performer, remained a much sought-after movie star for a further 20 years. Mind you, if we were feeling unkind, we might stop to wonder how she managed to attract such huge fees while appearing in so few good films. After 1972, when she starred in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?, a riotous tribute to screwball comedy, the list of pictures, many produced by herself, gets gradually more and more gruesome. The Way We Weretook place in an America so softly focused it was barely visible. Funny Ladywas a useless sequel to her breakthrough hit. A Star is Born, produced by her then-boyfriend, the hairdresser Jon Peters, was an unintentionally hilarious rock remake of a great Hollywood tragedy.
YET HER POWERcontinued to be awesome. Could any other 40-year-old actor - not to mention one with a face even the most charitable observer would balk at calling childlike - persuade a studio to allow her to appear in a film where she had to successfully pose as a teenage boy? Surely not. Yet Yentlgot made and, despite being sniffed at by audiences and critics, went on to gather a few minor Oscar nominations. The height of her hubris came four years later when, now firmly middle-aged, she deigned to play an improbably expensive prostitute in Martin Ritt's dubious Nuts.
If the numerous reports concerning her volatile personality are to be believed, producers are, perhaps, just plain terrified of saying no to her. The gossip columnists who so enjoy dragging up rumours of Streisand's supposedly unreasonable demands - her website fervently denies a suggestion that she requires rose petals be scattered about backstage loos - are surely encouraged in their efforts by the all-too-frequent manifestations of her worryingly thin skin. Indeed, she has given her name to the phenomenon whereby, through complaining too vociferously, celebrities merely draw attention to material they wish to see suppressed. The phrase "The Streisand Effect" came into use after Streisand unsuccessfully sued a photographer, whose purpose was to record coastal erosion, to prevent him from posting a picture of her house on the internet. By the time the case came to court, the photograph, previously of interest only to specialists, had been viewed millions of times by Streisand watchers.
HER UNCERTAINTY ABOUTaspects of the entertainment business also manifests itself in an enthusiasm for serial retirement that would have impressed the late Frank Sinatra. In 1974, three years before talking to Playboy at stupendous length, she gave the first of several final interviews with the press. When news emerged of the current world tour, some Streisand fans, having paid big money to see her farewell concert in 2000, approached their lawyers about the possibility of suing. Don't fork out €551.75 in the expectation of Streisand receding into humble obscurity.
In truth, the normal tragedies of ageing aside, Barbra Streisand has little to complain about. Now married to James Brolin, an actor of notably chiselled appearance, she has proved herself resistant to the assaults of right-wingers, style gurus and satirists. The men behind South Park, who, believing her to be "pure evil", frequently represent her as a giant robot named Mecha-Streisand have singularly failed to reduce the price of her tickets. She has even had another hit movie. Meet the Fockers, in which she starred alongside her old mate Dustin Hoffman, was the most successful film in Ireland in 2005.
So, who, in the age of the Arctic Monkeys, still listens to Streisand's class of MOR? The same people who make stars of the winners of Pop Idol. The same people who encourage Westlife to cover Sinatra songs. Those comforting tunes and easy melodies will, despite the efforts of scruffy men with guitars, never quite go away. It may not, exactly, be hip to be square, but it remains pretty darn lucrative.
The Streisand File
Who is she?
Resiliently popular singer and actor with substantial following among gay men and those who think rock'n'roll may be a passing fad
Why is she in the news?
On July 14th she will be playing her first ever concert in Ireland. The tickets for the gig at Castletown House range from a pricey €118.50 to an eye-watering €551.75
Most appealing characteristic?
Stubborn determination to speak her mind - on political issues in particular - despite the attacks of cynics and right-wing media bruisers
Least appealing characteristic?
Inability to shrug off criticism. Her website is cluttered with tedious rebuttals of largely trivial stories concerning her supposedly unreasonable demands
Most likely to say?
"Farewell. You've been wonderful, but I am withdrawing to spend my declining years alone"
Least likely to say?
"Didn't you hear me? Goodbye means goodbye"