Mandy Patinkin
In his new show Being Alive, with Adam Ben David on the piano, Mandy Patinkin tells a story about being in rehearsals for one of his very first plays in High School, and having a conversation with the director about the themes in the play. The theme that the director identified that stayed with young Mandy centred on saying “I love you” when that is how you feel about someone. This story feels very apt to me, because I do often see in the way that Patinkin sings, creates characters, and tells stories in interviews, that just beneath the surface you can see the love he has for others, for the work, and the art, and for the people who have written the songs that he sings. Tonight at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax, I felt the love that he had for us in the audience too.
Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world, myself included, fell in love with Patinkin’s family via Instagram and TikTok while we were all home during the height of the Covid pandemic, and we were all able to see the ways that Patinkin, his wife, actor, playwright and activist Kathryn Grody, their son, Gideon, and their dog Becky love and care for one another: big, vulnerable, earnest and imperfect, true. He brings a lot of the same emotions to the songs that he performs. The degree of care and meticulous attention to detail that has gone into every note of this show reflects the deep respect that he has for the material he has chosen.
Being Alive hinges a lot, I think, on the unexpected, so I am not going to ruin the surprises in the set list by giving a detailed overview of the songs that Patinkin sang tonight, although I will say many of his choices are songs that he sings on his wide array of solo albums, from his self titled debut album from 1989 to Children and Art (2019). Expressing your love for someone is a vulnerable act, and no matter what emotion Patinkin is expressing when he sings, you can feel the inherent vulnerability because the truth of the emotion is so palpable. In this way, even songs that we might dismiss from our childhoods as being silly or frivolous in Patinkin’s dexterous empathic heart can have their lyrics laid bare and he can find the places where they are tender, profound, and even devastating.
There is something so playful and imaginative in Mandy Patinkin’s performance here, especially in stretches of the show like the Silent Film Medley. Here I found myself being able to imagine both what Patinkin must have been like as a boy, creative and uninhibited, and as a father of young sons, fun and enthusiastically whimsical. His miming prowess and quick comedic timing really bring the theme of the music alive in a vivid and off-kilter way.
My favourite moment of the show was when Patinkin took a small musical scene from one of the classics of the American musical theatre canon, a scene that is usually regarded just as humorous exposition, and performed it with pianist Adam Ben David as though they were doing Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross at a theatre like Soulpepper or Steppenwolf. I will never forget the way Patinkin brought these lyrics to life, giving them gravitas, giving them genuine urgency and depth. It was truly a masterclass in acting, not just in musical theatre, but in general.
After The Princess Bride (1987), Dick Tracy (1990) and Impromptu (1991), the films that I grew up being the most familiar with, Mandy Patinkin filmed Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale (1994) on location in Cape Breton, and fell in love with the landscape and The Men of the Deeps. His affection for Nova Scotia and the audience tonight felt very heartfelt, and certainly the audience at the Cohn was radiating the love back at him. The show is very much about reconnecting after Covid, and the bond that can exist between a performer on stage and an audience, and how it is these moments that make us feel buoyantly alive.
Patinkin told us a beautiful story about how he first started performing, and his introduction to musical theatre, and then to Broadway itself through his father, Les, who sadly died in 1972 when Mandy was just nineteen years old. The through-line from Mame to Evita to Sunday in the Park with George is one of those perfect kismet stories that helps you believe in guiding forces, in people ending up on the roads that they’re meant to be on, and meeting the people that they’re meant to know along the way.
He did sing two songs in Yiddish, which soar for those like me who don’t understand the words, on a higher plane, reminding us of the power music has to touch heart to heart, and how connected we all are, beyond the languages our ancestors spoke, our disparate cultures, religions, or ethnicities. He reminded us that Harold Arlen (Hyman Arluck), and Yip Harburg (Isidore Hochberg), who wrote the iconic anthem “Over the Rainbow,” were both children of immigrants who emigrated from Russia, fleeing the pogroms there, as so many of those who built the American entertainment industry did.
That song, the longing to be able to slip out of oppression and into freedom like a bird, sadly remains all-too relevant in the political world near and far to this day. But I think Patinkin is offering us at least part of the answer as well, as the title of the show suggests, it’s about letting love in, even when it scares us or makes us feel uncomfortable. Together we encourage each other to care, as Stephen Sondheim says, to come through, and we help each other survive this often difficult, but hopefully worthwhile circumstance of being alive.
I went out into the freezing rain Haligonian night after the show with a very full heart. I love Mandy Patinkin. I have loved him since I was a teenager sobbing over the ending of Sunday in the Park with George. I love his sweet family, and I loved the evening we spent together at the theatre tonight.
Hopefully that can be a bit of light shining in a dark world.
Mandy Patinkin brings Being Alive to the Imperial Theatre in Saint John, New Brunswick next: April 6, 2024 at 7:30pm. For more information please visit this website. After New Brunswick, the show is going to New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, Virginia, and California.
