Meet a guy called Mandy Jewish Chronicle May 17, 1996   Crazy name, talented guy. Mandy (ne Mandel) Patinkin is a star of stage, screen and recording studio, equally comfortable with a Sondheim song and an Arthur Miller play. Helen Jacobus reports. Any guy who calls me "babe" gets my vote, straight off. Especially if he's a sixfootsomething, courteous and good-looking New Yorker. So, welcome to London, Mandy Patinkin, 43, actor and singer, who today finishes filming a BBC television adaptation of Arthur Miller's play, "Broken Glass," on location in the capital and at Ealing Studios. The play is set in Brooklyn, in 1938, at the time of Kristallnacht. Patinkin stars as a Jewish doctor, whose patient, a Jewish woman, has inexplicably lost the use of her legs. He is articulate, highly expressive and in possession of such a powerful larynx, his voice actually hurt my eardrums when it reached a crescendo at one point during our conversation. But before that, Mandy patiently explained the origins of his unusual name, a routine he must have run through thousands of times. "My real name is Mandel; my Hebrew-Yiddish name is Menachem Mendel after my grandfather, Max, who came originally from Poland. "His Yiddish-Hebrew name was Menachem Mendel. My parents gave me an American version of that name, which was Mandel. But they've have always called me Mandy, from the day they brought me home." Patinkin's career has been refreshingly varied. His movie roles have included playing the object of Barbra Streisand's desire in "Yentl" and co-starring in Rob Reiner's cult comedy, "The Princess Bride." As a singer in musicals, he has won two Tonys: for his performance as Che Guevara in "Evita" on Broadway, in 1979; and again, five years later, for his portrayal of the French painter, Georges Seurat, in Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George." [Webmaster's note: Mandy did not win the Tony for Sunday in the Park with George, but was nominated.] On television, he has starred as surgeon Dr Jeffrey Geiger in the American medical drama series, "Chicago Hope," which returns to BBC 1 next month. Sadly he has had to relinquish the role because of the strain of leaving his wife, Kathryn, and their two sons, Isaac and Gideon, at home in New York, while he worked long hours on the show, far away in Los Angeles. Being away from them for long periods is still an unavoidable wrench, but he is captivated by his role, Dr Hyman, in "Broken Glass" and identifies with the play's themes, quoting a few chunks of it. "My character says this Nazi thing can't possibly last, but he's wrong. But he's right when he says we should believe in people." His voice gets louder, much louder, as he says: "He's no different to me. I still can't believe, to this day, that human beings could have been capable of doing what they did there [in Nazi Germany], in Bosnia, in Rwanda." Then it falls dramatically to barely a whisper. "But it [the Holocaust] is unimaginable." Listening to this mesmerising verbal performance, it's no surprise to learn that Yiddish and cantorial music are in Mandy's blood. Nor is it a surprise that Stephen Sondheim, reportedly, told the actor-singer that he sometimes goes over the top. But with such boundless energy, what can one expect? Mandy Patinkin was brought up in an Orthodox family on the south side of Chicago, attended religion school every day "from the age of seven to 13 or 14," sang in synagogue choirs and retains an ambition to record at least one album of Yiddish songs, and also to be a cantor himself, particularly on High Holy-days. "I just want to sing in synagogue because that's the first music I heard. That's what made me like music," he enthuses. "I'm working on an album of Yiddish songs. It's taking a little time because I keep getting sidetracked, and because I'm learning the language from scratch. It's the only professional goal that matters to me." Recently, he performed a series of one-man concerts in London to promote his latest record, "Oscar and Steve" -- a collection of Hammerstein and Sondheim songs; he works closely with Stephen Sondheim, an association he describes as "a thrill, and I don't take it for granted." One of the most touching moments during our meeting was his account of his feelings towards his religion. "I am a sort of renegade Jew, who makes up my own prayers. They're combinations of Hebrew prayers, the Shemah, kaddish, other prayers that I know -- e.e. cummings, Shakespeare, anything that I like the words to." And whoever is listening up there would find those prayers compelling.