Celebrity cellar dweller

EVER wanted to be friends with a celebrity? Keen to snoop around a superstar’s mansion — and discover what lies beneath?

The Tasmanian Theatre Company is diving headfirst into the weird and wonderful lifestyles of the rich and famous next week, exploring celebrity culture and rampant consumerism in its first show for 2018, Buyer and Cellar. Directed by Robert Jarman, Buyer and Cellar is a one-man show starring Jeff Michel as a struggling actor named Alex More, who has just been fired from his job wearing a Roger Rabbit costume at Disneyland. But things start looking up for Alex when he is recommended for a new job — looking after the underground shopping mall that eccentric entertainment icon Barbra Streisand has had built under her Malibu mansion to house her huge collections of souvenirs, clothes and collectables.

Alex endeavours to befriend Streisand, but soon finds himself torn between striving for his boss’s glamorous and excessive lifestyle or trying to save his own personal relationship.

Written by US playwright Jonathan Tolins in 2012 and billed as “a jaw-dropping digest of narcissism, obsessive folly and stifling tastefulness”, Buyer and Cellar is a fictitious tale based on a bizarre-but-true fact: Streisand really does have a private underground shopping mall to store her expensive belongings.

The Tasmanian Theatre Company presents Buyer and Cellar at Pop-up Theatre No. 10 (the George Cartwright Room at Hadley’s Orient Hotel) from April 4-14, with performances at 7.30pm Wednesday-Saturday and 6.30pm Tuesday, plus a 2pm matinee on Saturday April 7.

Tickets are $49/$40 seniors/ $35 concession; go to www.centertainment.com.au or phone 6234 5998 for bookings.