[Continued from Part 1…]

Act 2 of Barbra: The Music… The Mem’ries… The Magic! served as a promotion for her upcoming album, ENCORE: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, that’s being released after the tour.  Streisand began, after returning from the Intermission, with “Pure Imagination” (that she sings, on Encore, with Seth MacFarlane) from the 1971 film, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.  I’d originally taken issue with its inclusion on this album; but I guess (seeing as it’s being sung in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – The Musical), that it’s a Broadway song – or at least, it will be, next spring, when the show opens on Broadway…

She continued with a duet of “Who Can I Turn To?” from The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd; performed – thanks to technology – with the late, great Anthony Newley; who’d co-written the song with Leslie Bricusse (coincidentally, the pair also co-wrote “Pure Imagination”). 

From here, we go to Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, and the introspective “Losing My Mind” (my favorite version of which was the lead single, from Liza Minnelli’s 1989 Pet Shop Boys-produced album, Results).  The song ends with the three-hanky lyric “You said you loved me. Or were you just being kind?  Or am I losing my mind?”   After this, Barbra treats us to a pair of songs from Funny Lady – “Isn’t this Better,” and “How Lucky Can You Get?” – neither of which appear on Encore, but whatever…

At this point, La Streisand, who (as the evening progressed) began returning the de rigueur shouts of “We love you, Barbra!” from the audience, through teeth that grew more and more clenched; finally snapped and wryly replied “Write me a note!”  (I laughed.  Hard.)  Meanwhile, here’s a thought: If you’re gonna yell, in an enormous arena, to someone who’s roughly a city block away from you; please yell loudly, and enunciate.  You’d think this would be commonsense, but most of the people shouting were less comprehensible than Charlie Brown’s teacher.  But I digress…

It was back to A Star is Born, for “With One More Look at You,” before returning to Sondheim, for “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods.  At this point, she quoted the abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, as saying, “It’s easier to praise children, than to repair broken men.”*

Then came that pair of enduring Jule Styne songs, from Funny Girl, that have been indelibly linked to Streisand, “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” and “People.” And while most recognize the latter as her so-called ‘signature’ number, the former (as I mentioned, last week) is filled with the indefatigable moxie that has so endeared Streisand to her legions of fans.

As her finale, Barbra Streisand sang the song that she’s proudly sung at the inaugurations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and William Jefferson Clinton – and will sing again, she hopes, at the inauguration of Hillary Rodham Clinton – “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Finally, as a teensy encore, she returned to the stage to sing Rogers & Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” from 1939’s Too Many Girls. 

If she’s coming to your town, go see Barbra Streisand, in Barbra: The Music… The Mem’ries… The Magic!; and if not, buy ENCORE: Movie Partners Sing Broadway.  The album features Streisand singing duets with such actors as Anne Hathaway & Daisy Ridley, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Jamie Foxx, Patrick Wilson, Chris Pine, and the incomparable Melissa McCarthy.

Barbra: The Music… The Mem’ries… The Magic!
T-Mobile Arena | Las Vegas
Saturday, August 6th
Click HERE for info

Get into it!
#Barbra

[Editor’s Note: Despite what hundreds of internet memes would have you believe, what Douglass actually said – in his 1855 book, My Bondage and My Freedom – was “Once thoroughly broken down, who is he that can repair the damage?”]