After long and careful consideration, I have reached the conclusion that this may well be the gayest play I have ever seen, not excluding La Cage Aux Folles. I don’t say that at all deprecatingly, nor as a lazy stereotype, although come on… it’s a solo piece about an out-of-work gay actor who gets a job staffing the fantasy shopping mall in the basement of Barbra Streisand’s estate. Before a word is uttered, the very premise is as camp as a field full of pastel bell tents. (The basement street of imaginary shops, however, really does exist, conceived and designed by Ms S; you can find photographs online.)
    
Michael Urie is not quite as restrained as he was on Ugly Betty. He leans, kicks, spins, gesticulates expansively and above all flashes widened eyes at us at almost every payoff line, our brand new GBF. It is as if the Scarecrow in The Wizard Of Oz (and there can be no closer friend of Dorothy) were being played by a particularly affectionate puppy.
    
I repeat that this isn’t meant to denigrate. For Urie’s enthusiasm grows disarming, and after the first half-hour or so of extended set-up, Jonathan Tolins’ fantasia (which premièred off Broadway in 2013, this being essentially the same production) begins to gain serious traction in examining stardom and loneliness, perfectionism and artifice. It’s made clear, not least for legal reasons, that this is an entirely imagined version of Streisand, and in a prologue Urie explains that he won’t “do” Streisand, won’t impersonate her… although, of course, he does. It is clear that love and admiration are at the heart of this portrait, although they mingle with puzzlement at such a life. Moreover, Tolins does not let the bitchery subside entirely: just at the most potentially poignant moment, he sidesteps from the main odd-couple buddy story into an über-sarky digression on The Mirror Has Two Faces, delivered in the persona of the protagonist’s Hollywood-bitch boyfriend.
    
I’m not persuaded that the piece is as contemplative as it may think it is, but it is not in any way malicious, and its 100 minutes prove irresistibly entertaining.
  
Written for the Financial Times.