‘To Barbra With Love’: Canberra’s baptism by Barbra

Posted on 24 January, 2023

We all know and adore her—a revered female trailblazer whose voice and lyrics have the power to earth-move, culture-shape and transcend.

And now, the legacy of Barbra Streisand is coming to life at the Canberra Theatre Centre on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 February.

At the hands of this talented cast and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, To Barbra With Love will take you on a beautiful journey of her expansive career—from her musical theatre hits to the classics we all know and love. And for those too young to know this living legend, think of it as your baptism by Barbra.

For Elise McCann (a musical theatre icon in her own right), being a part of this on-stage celebration was a no-brainer. Like many of us, she grew up alongside Barbra’s incredible voice and as ‘Women In Love’  blasted throughout our bedrooms, so did Elise’s blossoming vocals.

“I’d seen Hello, Dolly, I’d seen Funny Girl, I’ve seen Yentl…and that’s how I first was introduced to her catalogue, and obviously, her incredible voice,” she says.

“As a child, I wasn’t a particularly amazing singer, I loved to sing but was often out of tune. I would sing along to cast albums, constantly trying to capture her sound—she has a nostalgic place in my heart.”

Elise’s voice (now beautifully refined and strikingly similar to Barbra’s) will be joined on stage by Ainsley Melham (from Aladdin, Pippin and Charlie in (Merrily We Roll Along), Australia’s own musical theatre royalty Caroline O’Connor and Katie Noonan—whose versatility seamlessly moves between any genre.

Each performer breathes something incredibly unique into Barbra’s work, with carefully selected pieces that play to their strength and allow this effortless reimagining to take place. It’s what Elise describes as a careful collaboration between the director Cameron Mitchel, conductor Vanessa  Scammell, and Mark Sutcliffe, producer for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the brains behind the original body of work.

“We were each given our songs and were all able to be part of that discussion.  I actually jumped at it getting to perform a lot of the material from Yentl, and then we got to work really closely with the arranger Nicholas Buc to make sure that they were arrangements that really suited our voices if they were in the right key if we wanted to do something different with it,” says Elise.

Barbra’s narrative remains absent from this production, but rather her life is celebrated through a catalogue of fantastical works intersecting poetically with the intoxicating arrangements of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

From delicate harmonies and spine-tingling solos, this production lays bare Barbra’s magic with classics such as ‘Before the parade passes by,’  ‘Don’t rain on my parade,’ ‘Papa can you hear me,’ and ‘A piece of sky’—writing the ultimate love note.

“Every song is a banger!” says Elise. “There is literally not a dud in the house. In fact, people were kind of like, ‘Oh my god, we want more, we don’t want it to end.’ They are looking at trying to add in more materials—because everything is gold.”

“That’s really because it’s music that everyone knows, it really crosses generations, it crosses socioeconomic backgrounds, it’s a diverse catalogue. It covers her musical theatre periods, it covers the 60s, the 70s  and the 80s. There are so many decades of music and so many different genres because she had such dexterity and ability to sing across genres.”

As Barbra celebrates her 80th birthday, this production proves that her work will continue to inspire, touch and to heal audiences for decades to come, echoing loudly the voices of perhaps every generation.

“It does just feel like such a beautiful trip down memory lane. But it does so without trying to be naff.  It just feels beautiful. It’s just beautiful.”

Photography: Nico Keenan, Nico Photography