Brian McDonald and Jamie Torcellini team up for Ensemble Theatre Company’s season-opening production, Jonathan Tolins’s Buyer & Cellar. Torcellini directs this quirky comedy and McDonald reprises his role as Alex, a failing actor who becomes the entire staff of Barbra Streisand’s private, underground mall of collectables and keepsakes. McDonald received rave reviews for his performance in the same role at the Rubicon Theatre in 2018.
Even in revisiting a one-man show, says McDonald, there’s always room to fine-tune the performance to keep it emotionally authentic. “We’re open to rethinking,” Torcellini agrees. “Brian’s done the show before, so as the director, I want to see where it takes him and guide him in the way I think is helpful.”
The show, says McDonald, is about a character who is seeking agency while trapped in Babs’s massive collection. “What he realizes,” he says, “is that Barbra’s life is defined by all of these things she has. It’s so big and outside of her. And it hasn’t made her any more happy. I mean, she enjoys the stuff, but what has it really done for her?” McDonald describes the play as asking the audience to consider our cultural obsession with celebrity, wealth, and materialistic ideology.
Torcellini calls the show fast, funny, sharp, and a little bit naughty. “This is a tour de force for Brian,” he says. “You have to be likeable right off the bat, and he is.” McDonald also plays people beyond his primary character, presenting personalities such as James Brolin and Streisand herself.
“Yes, it’s hilarious and intimate and gives Brian a chance to go in and out of these characters,” says Torcellini, “but the show is also surprisingly touching.”
See McDonald star in Buyer & Cellar at the New Vic Theatre (33 W. Victoria St.) October 7-25. See etcsb.org/production/buyer-and-cellar.
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