Entertainment

The way she still is

‘The last time I sang in Brooklyn was on a stoop on Pulaski Street,” joked Barbra Streisand last night, just moments after taking the stage at the Barclays Center.

Believe it or not, the little girl who grew up in Flatbush had never played a concert in her home borough until now but in the shape of the newly opened arena, Brooklyn finally has a “stoop” that’s big enough to contain her talent, her orchestra, her brass section and, perhaps most crucially, her infamous ego.

Streisand’s current tour is called “Back to Brooklyn” and, unsurprisingly, it’s awash with memories, reminiscences and ghosts.

Dressed in a sparkly, floor-length Donna Karan dress and still looking a fair way off her actual age of 70, Babs does a fine job of settling back into Brooklyn life.

Her opener, “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” was laced with local lyrical references (the line about knishes being “oh so delicious” is especially priceless) and she settles into a chair and table-set piece stationed at the front of the stage to banter as if she were still on that stoop in Flatbush.

A slightly awkward Q&A session was also worked into the routine, during which Streisand inevitably fielded a question about Mitt Romney. “I hope nobody tells him the way to Sesame Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue,” she snapped back to roars of laughter and applause. Zing!

Over the duration of the show, these heavily scripted and occasionally tiresome monologues began to irritate. But while her lines were obviously rehearsed, there’s still nothing phony about that voice. Weathered though it undoubtedly is, she used it to deliver beautifully delicate versions of standards such as “Nice ’N’ Easy” and “That Face,” as well as her version of the Jimmy Webb-penned “Didn’t We” — a genteel ballad that had been consigned to the archives but finally unearthed last week for her new album of outtakes, “Release Me.”

The surefire show-stopper “The Way We Were,” meanwhile, carried an extra emotional weight as Babs made a point of memorializing the song’s composer and her close friend, Marvin Hamlisch, who died in August.

Of course, Streisand doesn’t quite have her tour legs anymore. She frequently left the stage for short spells and a midset intermission of 20 minutes, but with the cracks in her voice gradually becoming more audible, it was a forgivable act of self-preservation.

She kept enough in the tank to get her through a touching and intimate duet with son Jason Gould before swatting away the memories and looking to the future with a rousing version of “Here’s to Life,” in which she pointedly sang the line, “Even though I’m satisfied, I’m hungry still.”

Babs is back in Brooklyn for another date tomorrow night at the Barclays Center, then continues her North American tour, and then who knows?

But one thing’s for sure, she’s welcome back to Pulaski Street any time.