You have to give playwright Jonathan Tolins credit for one thing: a delightfully quirky fictional idea based in fact that no else could possibly imagine shaping into a one-person one-act play.
You must credit as well a companionable actor by the name of Brian McDonald for taking on a mountain of a role made out of several molehills, all meant to endear his fictional character Alex to us as he clambers up some meager little bumps on his road to happiness.
That sounds a bit snarkier than I intended it to be. Tolins’ flight of fantasy for a leisurely afternoon or evening is a mischievous little romp called Buyer & Cellar now playing at Ensemble Theatre Company in Santa Barbara. When introducing the show, ETC executive artistic director Scott DeVine wisely instructs us to “leave reality at the door.”
The play’s name is an altogether appropriate play on words that portends the wordplay throughout its 110 minutes. The fact that no actual buying or selling happens on its one set—the extravagant cellar of Barbra Streisand’s Malibu home which actually exists as a museum of the star’s collectibles made to look like a street of shops á la Disneyland’s Main Street—is beside the point.
A crystal chandelier lights the basement set as McDonald in a bravura performance shows us how Alex was hired to mind the stores. He conveys a bit of a Paul Lynde vibe when portraying the manager who hires Alex; he gives us a sincere and insightful tour of the shops (informed by Streisand’s 2010 book My Passion for Design), gives Alex leave to channel Babs herself, and takes us aside every so often on a nimble exploration of Alex’s own personal and professional lives.
What brings Alex to the basement (no spoilers here) turns out to be a search for himself that we get to enjoy along with him. Jamie Torcellini’s sensitive direction ensures that Alex’s connections to the arcane things in the museum around him (seen mostly through projections), along with McDonald’s connections to the audience around him, are grounded in hopes and dreams we can all recognize.
The scenic, lighting and in particular the projection designs by Mike Billings are exceptional, as is the sound design by Danny Fiandaca. It’s a tight production that makes the precise cues required look easy.
Buyer & Cellar is a light, enjoyable opening to ETC’s 48th season, “California Here and Now,” offering us the opportunity to ease into the more complicated, perhaps more demanding works ahead: the rock musical Rent, The Last Used Car Lot in America (a world premiere), Doubt starring Mimi Rogers, and Sam Shepard’s True West.