Ellen's Mandy Patinkin Page |
Theater Week August 7, 1989 |
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Mandy Patinkin: Putting It Together |
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The star of Sunday in the Park With George and Evita returns to Broadway in a concert for the theater: Sidney Lumet described Mandy Patinkin as "a bolt of lightning!" Lumet directed Patinkin in the 1983 film Daniel. Stephen Sondheim has called Patinkin's singing voice "brilliant-a gift from God?' Five months following six sold out performances at the Public Theater (on Mondays during his run in The Winter's Tale), the intense and sensitive actor-singer has just started a limited engagement of Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Dress Casual at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. 
Previously, Patinkin appeared on Broadway as Che Guevara, his Tony Award winning role, in Evita and as Georges Seurat (and his great grandson) in Sunday in the Park with George, for which he earned a Tony nomination. The first step in his latest journey to the Main Stem, explains the star, "was when I did Follies in Concert.” Preserved on recordings and videotape, the 1985 two-night, all-star presentation of the Sondheim musical at Avery Fisher Hall featured Patinkin's electrifying rendition of “Buddy's Blues.” Continues Patinkin: "The next day, Sam Cohn [his agent] called and said that CBS Records wanted me to do Lieutenant Cable on a new recording of South Pacific with Kiri 'TeKanawa and Jose Carreras. I said, 'Those guys are opera singers!' Sam said, ‘They want you.’ I did it [singing "Younger than Springtime" and "Carefully Taught"] and, because of it, CBS asked, 'Do you want to make your own record?' I said, 'Sure, but I'm too scared? I've always wanted to do my own album; but, God forbid, it shouldn't go well- so, forget it. 
"I went off, did some things. Then, we worked on the album [the acclaimed CBS recording, titled simply Mandy Patinkin]. 'We' consists of Paul Gemignani, Paul Ford and I.” Musical director Gemignani, Patinkin quickly points out, "helped organize Evita and conducted it. Then he did Sunday in the Park and Follies in Concert. He also helped out on the South Pacific album. I don't make a move without him. He came to rehearsals [for the concert] and I'd ask for his two, three or four cents; however much he had in his pocket. My album is as much his as mine.” Paul Ford, pianist on the recording, is also Patinkin's sole musical accompaniment in concert. "I didn't want a theme [for the album]. We chose songs that we liked. I can't read music. The songs were divided into three piles: those that were easy to learn and stuck with me; ones that were too hard to learn-so, forget about them; and those I learned but didn't like. The final choices had nothing in common-other than the fact they speak to me. Sondheim's songs are like lessons; 'No More' is incredible, there are so many lessons in it. Other songs, like 'Over the Rainbow; have a lot to do with hopes and dreams and struggles. The 'Happy Medley' [including "Swanee" and "My Mammy"] were songs I didn't like on their own, but Ford and I decided to string them together and we had a good time. "After the album came out, I realized that a lot of the songs had to do with my feelings about the past, present and future. In my opinion, 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?' should be the National Anthem. Before recording the album, I decided to try it out for some people. Somehow, it got out of hand. CBS rented RCA Studio One, they brought in food. I walked in.. There were about 10 friends of mine and 65 people invited by CBS. There was a spotlight. I said, 'Turn off the spotlight; put on the lights in the room.’ We started and I was terrified. I had hives, welts; that had never happened to me before. We did the 'Happy Medley' and I said to Paul Ford, 'Lets start again.’ We started over and, from that moment on, I felt fine!" "The concert will be probably half album, half new stuff. That's new old songs. I only do old songs [with the exception of his new single, "Mr. Arthur’s Place;' written by his friend, Thom Bishop]. Each performance will be a little different. I have a lot of stuff and can’t do it all in an hour-and-a-half.
"I do a mini-version of Pal Joey-about 10 minutes long. Ann Reinking helped me out with the movement. I'm thinking about doing Joey and Carousel repertory-a half-week of each one. But there are problems with Joey's second act. I want to see if we can work it out. I know Carousel works, but I want to see how I feel about it. I'd have to commit to [the combination] for at least a year and it would be expensive. First, I want to do a workshop with just a principle cast and skeleton crew-and, if I like it, I'd say, 'Let's go, full steam ahead!' "However, that has to wait awhile. Following the concerts, I go to the south of France to film James Lapine's movie, Impromptu, written by his wife Sarah Kernochan. It's about Chopin and George Sand, and I play Sand's first husband, Alfred DeMusset. "Then, I'm supposed to start [the film version of] Evita, if they can get the whole thing together. [Patinkin would repeat his role as Che, opposite Meryl Streep in the title role, with Oliver Stone set to direct.] And Steve Tesich has written a play for Dianne Wiest and me that I want to do at Second Stage - hopefully, when I get back from Evita. At some point, I need four to six weeks for the workshop of Pal Joey and Carousel.” In addition to all this activity, the busy Patinkin will be seen as "88 Keys" in the upcoming release, Dick Tracy, starring and directed by Warren Beatty. He's already filmed his role as accompanist to Breathless Mahoney (played by Madonna) and Stephen Sondheim has contributed three new songs to the project. "For Madonna, [Stephen] wrote 'More' and 'I Always Get My Man: And my song is called, 'What Can You Lose?' " However, the actor won't reveal how the number fits in the plot. "It's not a secret; but, first, let's see if it's kept in.” Perhaps Patinkin's doubt dates back to the 1983 film, Yentl, in which he got to sing nary a note as co-star to Barbra Steisand (who also directed, produced and co-authored the screenplay). "I'll always be frustrated about that,” admits Patinkin. “The rap is that, even before I got into the picture, the songs were conceived as being her thought processes. We did talk about my singing, but it never came to fruition. As a friend of mine later said, 'You don't think?' "
Born in Chicago, Patinkin first entered a Broadway theater when his father, Lester (who died in 1972), brought him to New York as a bar mitzvah present. "We saw Angela Lansbury in Mame and Walking Happy with Norman Wisdom,” recalls the actor. "I think that it was the seedling of something that I love.” Patinkin decided not to enter the family scrap metal business that his grandfather, Max, had started. Instead, he attended the University of Kansas (1970-72) and then came to New York to study acting at Juiliard. "After six hours, I knew that I didn't want to be there; but I also knew that I wanted to get a hold of some tools, in terms of being an actor-so I stuck it out for two-and-a-half years. "There were some students who couldn't function under the guide rules. They fell apart or were thrown out. To try to be an actor is a very delicate thing; you're exposing your soul. To say to a person of 17 or 18 or 19, who loves doing this, 'You're no good; we don't want you; is a horrible thing! "Some [instructors] know how to teach and some don't. They try to teach people how to play certain games with themselves-how to touch places within. If you don't know how to teach it; if you're going to unzip people and have them put their guts on the table-and you can't get those guts back in the right place and teach them to zip themselves up-you shouldn't be teaching. ''After I left Julliard, I went across country and then got my Equity card doing children's theater at Baltimore Center Stage.” Returning east, Patinkin worked extensively with the New York Shakespeare Festival. Among the highlights were playing Hamlet and having "a great, great time" in Trelawney of the Wells (at Lincoln Center) "with Mary Beth Hurt, Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, Michael Tucker, and Jeffrey Jones. We had a blast!" His stage work included an April 1978 appearance at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Michael Weller's The Split. In the cast was Kathryn Grody, whom Patinkin married in June 1980. The Patinkins are parents of two sons, Isaac and Gideon. (Kathryn Grody will soon be seen in The Lemon Sisters, sharing the title roles in the film with Diane Keaton and Carol Kane.) Patinkin got his first singing lesson when Geraldine Fitzgerald heard him vocalizing backstage while they were appearing in Michael Cristofer's The Shadow Box (1976). She gave him the gift of a lesson with Andy Thomas Anselmo. Says the actor, "I hate any kind of lessons; I hate being told what to learn-but when I got Evita, I called and asked, 'Can you teach me how to not hurt myself?' " The development of Sunday in the Park with George proved a fascinating experience for Patinkin. The song "Beautiful" evolved from a conversation he had with Stephen Sondheim. “No one,” states Patinkin, “had ever taken something I'd said and turned it into a poem-let alone, one with music.” His preparation for the role of Georges Seurat (1859-91) included Patinkin's traveling several times to Chicago's Art Institute to study the painter's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
It is not unusual for the actor to meticulously research a role. He took weeks of fencing lessons to play 13th-century swashbuckler, Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride. Of the 1987 film, Patinkin says, “I've never had more fun in my life.” In a 1987 interview, Joe Papp claimed that Patinkin was "worse than a perfectionist. A perfectionist reaches some degree of satisfaction...." Patinkin smiles. "I finally realized that there's no such thing as a perfectionist-Because you can never achieve perfection and anybody who tries is [crazy]. You should just work as hard as you can and call it a day.” By Michael Buckley |
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