Broadway Bound: "Mandy Patinkin at his best when playing the showman" Dallas Morning News By Lawson Taitte October 12, 1999 They ought to make a law that real Broadway stars have to appear on the Great White Way - in a show, not just a concert - at least every two years. If the theater is in perpetual distress, it's partly because the Mandy Patinkins of this world find it so lucrative to go off and do The Princess Bride and Chicago Hope. Yeah, the Constitution does say something about indentured servitude. But Mr. Patinkin's appearance Monday at the Bass Performance Hall left no doubt where he really belongs. That's on a stage, singing a song. Mr. Patinkin showed off a dazzling stylistic range, not to mention vocal range. He can do a reasonable legit baritone in the Rodgers and Hammerstein repertoire. At the other end of the scale, those unique high sounds he makes fall someplace between Dennis Day and a baroque countertenor. In just the opening minutes, Mr. Patinkin staked out an enormous territory that he had inherited from the best. He brought to life the old Al Jolson tunes as only somebody who started out singing in a synagogue could. Nobody else in the world could have as much fun with the patter songs Kurt Weill wrote for Danny Kaye. Broadway has been praying for somebody who could fill Robert Preston's shoes in the upcoming revival of The Music Man, with no candidate on the horizon. Mr. Patinkin did so effortlessly. He conjured up Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr and Bing Crosby. He also explored the Yiddish vein to which he has sometimes devoted whole concerts. And then of course there's Mr. Patinkin's own legacy. He created the role of Che in Evita, and Monday he proved he still has the chops for it after 20 years. No other male can illuminate Stephen Sondheim's cerebrally melodic stuff like the star of Sunday in the Park With George, either. Mr. Patinkin did let the audience know he's going to be in an actual Broadway show come late winter - Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party. That was about the only good thing to come out of the performer's spiel between songs. The rest was self-indulgent audience participation stuff - apparently to let us all know just how big a star Mr. Patinkin is. His singing did the job far better. That's another advantage to a law requiring stars to appear in actual shows. Somebody else writes the scripts. It would have been nice, too, if the singer had told us who wrote some of the more obscure vocal material. But hey, when Jolson sang a song it became a Jolson song, even if George Gershwin penned it. If Mr. Patinkin wants to claim a star's prerogatives, we should be the last to complain.

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