It's hard now to think of Barbra Streisand as an underdog.
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Over six decades, Streisand has established herself as an enduring, multitalented titan of the world of entertainment - movies, theatre, concerts, recordings.
She's received many awards and honours and is among the few artists to achieve EGOT status - a recipient of the Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar and Tony awards (her 1970 Tony was an honorary rather than a competitive one, as Star of the Decade).
She has 51 gold and 31 platinum albums to her credit.
Streisand turned 80 in April 2022 which was the impetus for the touring show To Barbra, With Love. Like much else it was supposed to come to Canberra last year but had to be postponed.
Streisand performed in Australia in 2000 but is unlikely to again - this concert, performed by four acclaimed Australian singers, might be the next best way to celebrate the legendary performer's 80th year, and her career.
The show's director, Cameron Mitchell - a veteran choreographer whose first directing gig was the Australian premiere of Catch Me If You Can - says Streisand was indeed an underdog when she started.
Streisand was not conventionally beautiful and her outspoken New York Jewish manner did not appeal to some but she had self-belief, talent and, as Mitchell puts it, "a voice like no other".
All those qualities took to the top and kept her there.
"She conquered everything she tried," Mitchell says.
Her first lead role on Broadway, playing Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1964), made her a star and when she made her film debut in the 1968 movie adaptation, she won the best actress Oscar (in a tie with Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter).
She went on to a movie career that spanned musicals, comedies and dramas and also directed herself in Yentl (1983) and The Prince of Tides (1991).
Her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album (1963) won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best female vocal performance.
Since then, she's become one of the biggest-selling singers and has recorded dozens of albums, everything from show tunes to contemporary pop to an album of songs by composers such as Robert Schumann, Gabriel Faure and Claude Debussy.
The classical repertoire won't be on the program for To Barbra, With Love but there's plenty of other material from which to choose and Mitchell says the selections span Streisand's whole career, from the 1960s to the present.
It's been a challenge trying to fit such a lot of varied material into a two-hour show.
"We've tried to keep all the fans happy," Mitchell says.
"We have a little of everything."
Singing the songs will be Australian musical theatre veteran Caroline O'Connor (Chicago), versatile singer-songwriter Katie Noonan and younger musical theatre performers Elise McCann (Matilda The Musical) and Ainsley Melham (Aladdin), who is replacing Ryan Gonzalez.
In the ACT performances, they'll be backed by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vanessa Scammell.
O'Connor was an obvious choice to perform. The English-born Australian actress has long been a theatre star in both countries as well as performing in films - she was Nini-Legs-in-the Air in Moulin Rouge! - and on Broadway.
She won awards for her performances in West Side Story and Chicago and for playing two other legendary singers, Edith Piaf in Piaf and Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.
O'Connor will be singing solo in some of the big Broadway numbers, like People and Don't Rain On My Parade from Funny Girl as well as Send In the Clowns from A Little Night Music, to which composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim added an extra verse for Streisand.
All four singers will join forces for another Sondheim song, Putting It Together from the musical Sunday in the Park With George.
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While O'Connor was filming Moulin Rouge!, friends invited her to a Streisand performance but she had to decline.
"Baz [Luhrmann, the director] said, 'I can't let you go,'" O'Connor says.
"I was so jealous I wasn't there."
In a way, it might have been for the best.
If O'Connor had met Streisand, she says, "I think I would be speechless."
O'Connor does have a couple of Streisand connections - she, too starred in a production of Funny Girl and has performed Sondheim songs and knew him.
"I sang at his 80th birthday concert at the Royal Albert Hall," O'Connor says.
She'd encountered him an earlier show, in Paris, and says, "The last time I saw him was at Chicago and he said, 'Are you stalking me?''
While O'Connor might be eminently suited for this kind of concert, Noonan wasn't sure she was.
When the producer of the original show called to ask if she was interested, Noonan thanked him but says she didn't think of herself as someone who would sing Barba Streisand songs.
But then she reconsidered.
Streisand, she says, "had had such an incredibly eclectic career - she's done jazz, pop, disco, torch songs, a really incredibly diverse career".
Noonan, perhaps thinking of her own versatility - with a career that has encompassed opera, pop, rock and jazz - says she thought, "This could be really fun."
Singing a large range of songs with the backing a symphony orchestra isn't an opportunity that arises every day.
And she appreciated Streisand's "extraordinary talent" across so many fields.
Among the numbers Noonan will perform are Somewhere from West Side Story, Cry Me A River, Woman in Love, and the song that Streisand wrote with Paul Williams, Evergreen, from the film A Star is Born (1976).
Streisand won her second Oscar for Evergreen.
Another thing she enjoys is working with the other singers with their musical theatre experience, "a really different group of people" from whom she can learn.
It will be certainly be a very different experience for Noonan compared to her previous Canberra performances last year at the National Folk Festival - of which she was artistic director - and the 20th-anniversary performance of the george album Polyserena with her brother Tyrone.
Noonan, like O'Connor, is a woman of many talents here celebrating another.
To Barbra, With Love - An 80th Birthday Celebration is on at the Canberra Theatre on February 10 at 7.30pm and February 11 at 2pm. Bookings: (02)62752700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au.