All by Himself

Few performers have the talent and magnetism to carry a one-person show by singing old Broadway show tunes, sentimental ballads and Yiddish classics.

But Mandy Patinkin, the Tony and Emmy Award-winning showman, consistently entertains, even electrifies, the most urbane audiences singing his eclectic mix of popular songs, usually sharing the stage only with his piano player and a flowering pot or two.

“What’s amazing about him, and everyone knows about him, is that he comes to this big hall — 3,000 seats — with just himself and a piano player, and you say to yourself, ‘How is he going to do this for an hour and a half, and with no intermission?’ And then he goes and goes and at the end you just can’t believe what you’ve seen,” said Jerry Mandel, president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, where Patinkin is scheduled to perform on Oct. 12.

Patinkin started his concert career in 1989 at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in New York. Some critics’ reviews describe him as being “over the top” or “cloying,” while others say the dramatic tenor simply defies classification, calling him everything from actor and singer to musical theater performer and entertainer extraordinaire.

“Most singers are just singers, and not actors. But he’s also a consummate actor. He puts his entire body into it. It’s like a Broadway show,” Mandel said. Patinkin drew a sell-out crowd during his last appearance at the Performing Arts Center three years ago. “He gives you a package that very few people have.”

Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Patinkin was a talented singer, a soloist with the children’s choir at his Conservative congregation. He heard snatches of Yiddish from his grandparents, but when he made his Yiddish CD “Mamaloshen” (1998) — as promised to Papp — the singer, who has come to personify a good Jewish boy, had to start learning Yiddish from scratch.

Yiddish songs are just one part of his repertoire. Patinkin typically performs tunes by composers Stephen Sondheim, Irving Berlin, Randy Newman and Harry Chapin.

Patinkin describes himself as the “messenger” of the songwriters whose work he performs and cited the theater as his surrogate synagogue. “Every theater I’m in is a synagogue — it’s the place where I feel in touch with God and humanity,” Patinkin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

On Sept. 10, 2001, Patinkin had been performing a concert “as a prayer for peace in the Middle East,” but post-Sept. 11 he changed it to a “prayer for everywhere.”

Patinkin took a hiatus after the attacks, which struck especially close to home — his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is minutes from Ground Zero.

“Five to six weeks into it,” he told The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia that he got “fed up.”

“I woke up one day and said, ‘I’ve had it.’ I wanted to desperately go out and do my concert of Sept. 10.”

“When I walk out front for those two hours, it’s the best part of the day.”

Patinkin’s performances had been patriotic even before flag waving became popular post Sept. 11. He’d often concluded his shows by singing “God Bless America” in Yiddish.

Peace and a better world are often a subtext of a Patinkin appearance — or nonappearance.

In April 1999, he stayed away from a celebrity-packed, televised Hollywood tribute to Israel’s 50th anniversary, saying that he opposed then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attitude toward the Middle East peace process.

“I would love to participate but I feel like my hands are tied,” he told The Jewish Telegraphic Agency of the show that aired on CBS that year.

“It’s a tragedy, what’s happening. I pray with every ounce of my being that the peace process continues. It’s a symbol for the entire world, and if it’s not attended to, we’ll all have a heavy price to pay,” Patinkin said presciently at the time.

On the door of his apartment, beside a mezuzah, Patinkin keeps a sign: “Imagine all the people, living life in peace.”

What wasn’t in question was Patinkin’s love of Israel. During a recent Sondheim tour, he segued into “Children Will Listen” from “Hatikvah” in Hebrew.

Beyond the theater community, Patinkin is perhaps best known for playing Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, a singing cardiologist on “Chicago Hope.” His critically acclaimed performance won him an Emmy Award in 1995. (Other television performances include playing Quasimodo opposite Richard Harris in the TNT film presentation of “The Hunchback” and Kenneth Duberstein, the lobbyist assigned to navigate Clarence Thomas through his Senate hearings, in Showtime’s “Strange Justice.”)

The Jewish sensibility that Patinkin personified as the soulful Geiger is a recurrent characterization in his career and more recently in his off-screen life. On the big screen, he played the yeshiva study partner of Anshel (Barbra Streisand), a Jewish girl disguised as a boy, in “Yentl.” He also has numerous feature film credits, including “The Princess Bride,” “Ragtime,” “Dick Tracy,” “True Colors” and “The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.”

In his Broadway debut in 1980, Patinkin won a Tony Award for his role as Ché in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita.” He also was nominated for his starring role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Sunday in the Park With George.” He has numerous other stage credits.

Although Patinkin, 49, started singing as a child in synagogues and community centers in his Chicago hometown, and attended Hebrew school and Jewish summer camp, he has said he essentially abandoned Jewish life in college. It wasn’t until he met and married his wife, author and actress Kathryn Grody, and then had two children with her, that he began to embrace religion again. Patinkin described his current Jewish life in New York as “home based.” He infrequently attends services at the neighborhood Conservative synagogue, where he reportedly is a member. Patinkin was unavailable for an interview, according to his publicist.

In 1998, after learning Yiddish, Patinkin recorded the compact disc “Mamaloshen,” which features an unconventional mix of classic Yiddish songs, such as “Oyfn Pripetshik” and “Raisins and Almonds,” with traditional American songs, such as “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” Another song is a medley that starts with “Ten Kopeks” and ends with “The Hokey Pokey.”

“God almighty,” Patinkin told a reporter, “I am so lucky to have this right now. It’s a great gift that I have the chance to perform for other people at this moment. I feel very blessed. It’s the most extraordinary experience to sing words written by genius lyricists who put down on paper what they wished for the world. Well, now those prayers are wished for more than ever. And I’m just the mailman. I’m the messenger boy.”

Patinkin will be the second artist featured in the Performing Arts Center’s Spotlight Series on Sunday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $28 to $52 and are on sale at The Center Box Office, online at The Center’s Web site at www.ocpac.org, or by phone through Ticketmaster at (714) 740-7878 or (213) 365-3500.