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Mandy Patinkin: Mamaloshen
By D. Spencer
November 1998
A number of years ago, I was discussing a mutual friend,
with my pal, orchestrator Doug Besterman. Our friend, an actress of
some repute, is a young woman of fierce intelligence and extreme passions
which combine to create a sometimes intimidatingly iconoclastic personality.
"She's dangerously herself," Doug said.
That's pretty much the way one has to describe Mandy
Patinkin as well, and for the same reasons. A famously difficult artist,
he is even more famously singular, his charisma of an unusually high
octane--even for a star--and his intensity of such laser-hot concentration
that he is both revered and reviled. Dangerously himself is about
right.
How else to explain the sometimes mind-boggling tour
de force "Mamaloshen" playing a limited engagement at the Belasco
Theatre. A vocal concert of approximately 75 minutes, all but a few
fragments of a Paul Simon song--used as connective tissue--are sung
in Yiddish. Mr. Patinkin's ethnic pride aside--and being "of the tribe"
I share it--the conceit of the evening, in both the conceptual and
ego senses of the word, is baldly audacious.
Its agenda is not only to encapsulize the historical
Jewish American experience, but the emotional one as well. (Mixed
in with traditional and popular period Yiddish songs are renditions
of such variegated fare as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and the Bernstein/Sondheim
ballad "Maria".)
The big question, when it begins, is how the hell
will he sustain the evening. You kind of suspect his signature fervor
will keep you looking at him, but you wonder about clarity. Every
Patinkin concert I've ever seen contains at least one bold leap off
the cliff, and this one is no exception.
He uses what I call subtitle essences. He's too canny
(and probably too prideful) to have simultaneous translations flashed
on the black scrim behind him (he performs the majority of the show
against a black background, lit in various pools of light, standing
pretty much in place behind a single microphone, even his pianist
masked off behind a tall upright). But when he starts each new section,
what does get projected is a little legend, such as: "A guy wants
ten pennies to romance his girl." That's it. But that's enough. It
gives you the context. Patinkin's interpretive energy does the rest.
You don't get everything, of course...but you get enough. And when
the songs are familiar, the joy is in the contrast of cultural treatment.
With musical arrangements by Paul Ford and Eric Stern
(who with Lawrence Yurman rotate as accompanist on point for any given
performance), "Mamaloshen"--which translates as "mother tongue"--is
one of those grand theatrical statements. Love it, hate it, resent
it, embrace it...I'm not even sure that matters. What matters is that
Patinkin is an extreme experience. And what can be more theatrical
than that?
Mandy Patinkin: Mamaloshen
By D. Spencer
November 1998
A number of years ago, I was discussing a mutual friend,
with my pal, orchestrator Doug Besterman. Our friend, an actress of
some repute, is a young woman of fierce intelligence and extreme passions
which combine to create a sometimes intimidatingly iconoclastic personality.
"She's dangerously herself," Doug said.
That's pretty much the way one has to describe Mandy Patinkin as well, and for the same reasons. A famously difficult artist, he is even more famously singular, his charisma of an unusually high octane--even for a star--and his intensity of such laser-hot concentration that he is both revered and reviled. Dangerously himself is about right.
How else to explain the sometimes mind-boggling tour de force "Mamaloshen" playing a limited engagement at the Belasco Theatre. A vocal concert of approximately 75 minutes, all but a few fragments of a Paul Simon song--used as connective tissue--are sung in Yiddish. Mr. Patinkin's ethnic pride aside--and being "of the tribe" I share it--the conceit of the evening, in both the conceptual and ego senses of the word, is baldly audacious.
Its agenda is not only to encapsulize the historical Jewish American experience, but the emotional one as well. (Mixed in with traditional and popular period Yiddish songs are renditions of such variegated fare as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and the Bernstein/Sondheim ballad "Maria".)
The big question, when it begins, is how the hell will he sustain the evening. You kind of suspect his signature fervor will keep you looking at him, but you wonder about clarity. Every Patinkin concert I've ever seen contains at least one bold leap off the cliff, and this one is no exception.
He uses what I call subtitle essences. He's too canny (and probably too prideful) to have simultaneous translations flashed on the black scrim behind him (he performs the majority of the show against a black background, lit in various pools of light, standing pretty much in place behind a single microphone, even his pianist masked off behind a tall upright). But when he starts each new section, what does get projected is a little legend, such as: "A guy wants ten pennies to romance his girl." That's it. But that's enough. It gives you the context. Patinkin's interpretive energy does the rest. You don't get everything, of course...but you get enough. And when the songs are familiar, the joy is in the contrast of cultural treatment.
With musical arrangements by Paul Ford and Eric Stern (who with Lawrence Yurman rotate as accompanist on point for any given performance), "Mamaloshen"--which translates as "mother tongue"--is one of those grand theatrical statements. Love it, hate it, resent it, embrace it...I'm not even sure that matters. What matters is that Patinkin is an extreme experience. And what can be more theatrical than that?