Photo by Richard Avedon

"Showcase: Mandy Patinkin" New Yorker August 1, 1994 By B. Lemon Mandy Patinkin is in the business of showstopping. He is a musical force of nature. Four times already this year, he has hijacked the David Letterman show with the vigor of his personality and the thrill of his tenor voice. Patinkin doesn't just sing songs; he embodies them. This combination of imagination and musical discipline accounts for the fact that over the past fifteen years you've almost always been able to find Patinkin starring in one of Broadway's musical hits: as Che in "Evita," as Marvin in "Falsettos," and, his most famous role, as Georges Seurat in Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park With George." In May, he reprised Seurat in concert at the St. James Theatre, and two days later, with the release of the dramatically compelling album "Experiment," in which the composer was represented by six selections, the forty-two year old performer solidified his reputation as the quintessential male Sondheim interpreter. But something unusual happened when the insistent Patinkin moved downtown to the Public Theatre to perform "Experience" (sic??) live: things got very quiet. "That mood was very much in the spirit of the album," the singer says. "When I looked around for material this time, I was consciously looking for quiet songs -- I actually thought about titling the project "Sh-h-h!" But then it seemed more appropriate to name it after a Cole Porter song that Jonathan Schwartz" -- the pop classicist -- "had brought to my attention." In his current project, the fall's most touted new television drama, "Chicago Hope," Patinkin doesn't sing at all. "I play a cardiothoracic surgeon working in a high-tech hospital," he says. "He's the star doctor, a real tornado." The role smacks of scenery-chewing -- a charge that has dogged Patinkin in the past. "The over-the-topness will always be there," he says. "That's just who I am."

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