Described as an adoring fan letter to songstress Barbra Streisand, Buyer and Cellar, is a challenge for a performer because the play involves so many fast tempo dialogue exchanges between the various characters, all played by him. “It’s a marathon of a show,” he continues. “I’d actually underestimated how taxing it would be. The language is very theatrical language. Sometimes the characters speak in single sentences and I have to switch back and forth, look in different places, make different vocal choices; and there are big physical choices to make, like how a character walks. And I sing in it, just to make it even harder!” Not Streisand songs, presumably? “No, we can’t use hers,” he says. “I sing an old musical song, a well-known Broadway number, nothing crazy.”
The play takes to task the world of über-celebrity with all its acquisitiveness. After trying to suppress a photo of her Malibu home in 2003 from the internet, the famously materialistic Streisand released a coffee table book called My Passion for Design, and that’s when the world found out that there is indeed a replica shopping mall in the basement of her estate. Playwright Tolins became intrigued by this fact, and wondered what life would be like for someone, a gay actor between jobs, say, who had to work there, and so Buyer and Cellar was conceived. The script is hilarious according to Flanders, about to go off to brunch to celebrate his 34th birthday and then on to rehearse the show on the day Beat speaks to him. “It’s laugh out loud funny. It’s like your funny friend is telling you an outrageous story.”
Although Streisand rarely gives interviews, there’s a strong public perception of her as the ultimate demanding diva. What’s it like to perform a work about a performer who’s the epitome of drag queen cliché? “It’s not like I’m directly imitating Barbra but I do boil down the essence of who she is,” explains Flanders. “The script does a lot of that work. Every scene is a different version of the Barbra myth. We go beneath the layers. People do have an idea of who she is; it’s like her life is in the public domain. She is responsible for her own personal mythology. She has reiterated the story about the funny looking girl who had a dream.”
Although he has a few Barbra moments on stage, the androgynous Flanders remains dressed as a boy in his MTC mainstage debut, something of a relief, he reckons, after all those performances with his gender-bending theatre company Sisters Grimm. “It’s nice not to have to worry about bras and stockings and wigs or falling over in heels. A lot of architecture goes into making the female form. All that padding and tightening of the waist.” And it appears that body image issues really do go with the territory. “You can get funny about your body, thinking ‘why don’t I look right?’” Flanders describes himself as ‘a striking looking woman and an OK-looking man’. Beat’s not sure we’d even recognise him in boy clothes. Flanders says his androgynous quality has served him well in his chosen career path. He does make a ravishing-looking woman: is he a cross-dresser off-stage? “No. I only do it when I get paid for it,” he says. “It’s not cheap! I’m thrilled for anyone who does it but I’m usually in loose jeans and a T-shirt.
“I’m going through my own diva period,” Flanders adds, which is not surprising given that he’s making his own dreams come true after 16 years of performing. “I’m still so earnest about theatre,” he continues. “If you’d told me back then I’d be doing a solo show in the Fairfax I would not have believed you. I dreamt of getting off at Flinders St Station and making my way to the Arts Centre to do a show for Melbourne audiences. Melbourne audiences are so passionate. I love them.” Is this sort of success what he planned for himself? “Yes, it is what I intended for myself,” he answers thoughtfully. “I’ve slowly climbed my way up to performing on a stage this size.” Buyer and Cellar is directed by Gary Abrahams, a long-time colleague. “We’ve worked together as actors,” Flanders says. “He’s another person I’ve come up with through the Melbourne independent theatre scene. We’re equally as committed as each other to independent theatre in Melbourne. You do have to be a lunatic to do this. You don’t do this for the security. But I’m so happy to be working on my birthday, on a public holiday; it’s my favourite thing to do, to be there with the audience.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
