The Way She Is

By Richard Zoglin

Barbra Streisand is not happy. Here she is, a pop superstar revered by millions, newly embarked on her first paid concert tour in 28 years. Yet all she hears is complaints.

Take those ticket prices. With a top fee of $350 a seat, the Streisand show (which begins its five-city U.S. swing this week in Washington) far surpasses even the priciest predecessors in the can-you-top-this field of concert extravaganzas. But Streisand doesn't see a problem. "I think this price is fair," she says. "If you amortize the money over 28 years, it's $12.50 a year. So is it worth $12.50 a year to see me sing? To hear me sing live? I'm not going to do it again."

Then there is the TelePrompTer matter. During her show, a video screen hangs high above the audience, displaying not only the lyrics to her songs but most of the patter in between them. Critics who caught her first concerts in London were derisive. Streisand claims that she hardly ever looks at the prompter but needs it to relieve the stage fright that kept her away from live performing since a 1967 free concert in New York City, when she forgot some song lyrics. "I couldn't be doing this ((touring))," she says, "if I didn't have it as my security blanket. Some people have worry beads; I have TelePrompTers."

Yet her biggest peeve of all is the nosy, mean-spirited press. Usually Streisand tries to avoid reporters. But in a rare interview with TIME last week, she had all the recent slights at her fingertips: a British tabloid that claimed she arrived in London toting her own trash can (it was actually a hatbox); a New York Times op-ed piece criticized the dress she wore at the Inaugural gala; a story in TIME listed some of her alleged tantrums. And when, at a dinner honoring Hillary Clinton, she gave a speech about our society's view of women, nobody covered it.

"What I don't understand about the press in general is a kind of contempt for the facts," she says. "To propagate the myth of the diva is so simplistic. It's a very simplistic way to look at people. The power of the printed word is black and white, but people are many shades of gray. They can't quite understand how I could be a so-called powerful woman and yet be frightened, let's say. It's like they don't go together. It's too complex."

Powerful, complex, frightened -- all might fairly be applied to Streisand. She is the most popular and enduring pop singer of her generation; a filmmaker widely acknowledged to have more clout than any other woman in Hollywood; a political activist with the money to back her beliefs. Yet stories of her rampaging ego, of fights with co-stars and directors, of her obsessive perfectionism, are legion. More recently she has been knocked for being first among Hollywood's Clinton groupies. "On a clear day in Washington," a catty New York Times story put it, "you can see Barbra Streisand forever."

Responding to the criticism, she can be both feisty and ingenuous. Is she not uncomfortable with all the extravagant merchandising that surrounds her tour? Along with the usual T shirts and overpriced programs, Sony, her record company, is setting up Barbra Boutiques in each of the cities where she will appear. There will be Streisand shirts, Streisand pens, Streisand watches, ties, scarves and a $400 wool jacket. Yet Streisand says she had a ball helping design the clothes. "I almost didn't want them to do any merchandising. I said, 'Who would ever buy my stuff?' When they told me that people at the Super Bowl spend $20 per person, but in Las Vegas my merchandise sold $40 per person, I was thrilled but absolutely amazed."

She is rightly puzzled over the controversy surrounding her plan to use the concert tour to help some favorite charities. Streisand has turned over blocks of tickets for each concert to such groups as the Gay Men's Health Crisis and the Environmental Defense Fund, which in turn must sell the $350 tickets for $1,000 apiece in order to realize a $650 profit. Some charities have been left with many seats unsold, and there has been criticism that Streisand should have simply given away the tickets. Yet since she has promised to take back any unsold tickets, most charity heads agree that it is a no-lose proposition.

After all the posturing and behind-the-scenes brouhahas, it is a relief to encounter Streisand where she belongs -- onstage. Her show, previewed in Las Vegas last New Year's and launched in London last month, is a sleek and impressive showcase. Appearing on a lavishly appointed living-room set (Greek columns, flowing sheer drapery), Streisand glides through most of her big hits (People, Evergreen), the standards she has made her own (My Man, Happy Days Are Here Again) and a few recent additions to the Streisand canon (As If We Never Said Goodbye, from Sunset Boulevard). The voice is still strong and supple: too polished and self-conscious to convey much real emotion anymore, but for sheer musicality, as thrilling as ever.

Between numbers, Streisand introduces some film clips, reminisces about her childhood, pokes fun at her obsession with psychotherapy. Some material is tailored to individual cities; in London she joked about Prince Charles and wondered what it would have been like to be "the first real Jewish princess." The only thing missing (and the TelePrompTer is at least partly to blame) is any sense of spontaneity or free-flowing interaction with the crowd. It is not so much a concert as a well-oiled Broadway tribute -- or maybe an American Masters TV special, presented by the Master herself.

For Streisand, 52, the concert is both a career capstone and a personal milestone. "I enjoy the privacy of the creative process when I make films and when I record," she says. "There's a certain kind of perfection that you attain when you're doing it privately. ((But)) being on the stage now is the acceptance of all imperfections. I'm singing about 30 songs, and my voice goes hoarse at times, and that's part of the growing-up process -- in which you accept the flaws and that it's not perfect. And to allow people to see me that way is my growth process.

"Before we opened Funny Girl ((on Broadway in 1964))," she says, "we had 41 last scenes. Every night was a change, and I loved every minute of it. We froze it opening night, and I was in prison. I used to give notes after every show -- like the orchestra's off -- because I could never let it become old. It had to be fresh and real every time, every moment."

Streisand recalls the times with girlish enthusiasm. "I was usually late to the theater every night. I used to try to get a cab on Central Park West, and half the time I couldn't get the cab. I would hail police cars, trucks, anything, with tears streaming down my cheeks, to try to get me to the theater. I was always late -- have to get in there, put on the clothes, get on the stage. And when ((method-acting guru)) Lee Strasberg came to see me, I said, 'I feel so bad I can't use your method in terms of ((Stanislavsky's book)) An Actor Prepares.' And he said, 'Your preparation is not to prepare.' "

It is hard to imagine a piece of advice less likely to influence Streisand. Even those who find her a maddening perfectionist admit that few performers work harder. A musician who played in her Las Vegas show logged in 60 hours of orchestra rehearsal time, and says Streisand, unlike most singers, was present for almost every minute. Lyricist Marilyn Bergman, who with her partner and husband Alan helped write the script for Streisand's stage show, scoffs at her reputation as a difficult diva. "Barbra never says, 'That's good enough.' People who don't understand or appreciate this process might find it threatening or tiresome. But she is indefatigable."

Streisand's friends also claim she has gotten a bum rap for her political activities. "I think she's a very, very serious person," says Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist who is working with Streisand on a screen version of his play The Normal Heart, which she will direct, produce and act in. "She's very interested in politics, she's very interested in the daily newspapers and journalism, and she's very interested in learning." Streisand fervently defends her attachment to the Clinton Administration during the Inaugural and after. "I think the press was jealous of the people who had some access to Clinton," she says.

To be sure, few Hollywood stars have more effectively spent their money in pursuit of political passion. Her foundation has distributed $7.7 million to support a variety of liberal causes. Along with The Normal Heart (subject: AIDS), Streisand is also producing a TV movie about Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, who was booted out of the military for being a lesbian (Glenn Close will star). She donated her Malibu ranch to an environmental conservancy and put up for auction millions of dollars' worth of art and furnishings that she had collected since the '60s. "I don't want to spend so much time being preoccupied with objects," she wrote in the Christie's catalog that offered the items, "and I don't want so many things anymore."

For those watching her show from $350 (or $1,000) seats in 14,000-seat arenas over the next few weeks, she may not look like a stripped-down % superstar. But Streisand is approaching her tour in a mellow, almost wistful new mood. "I felt it was time to give back something to the people who have wanted me to sing live for all these years," she says. "I've been around 33 years. When I hear my own overture play, I say, 'My God! You mean I sang all those songs?' People talk to me, and they say, 'I remember, the birth of my child was when you sang that song.' And 'I remember getting over a love affair when you sang this song.' I used to never let that stuff in. Now it's kind of a wonderful thing, to appreciate my own career."

With reporting by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York