"Mandy Patinkin and The Joy of Yiddish" Washington Post, February 11, 1999 by Patricia Sommers Mandy Patinkin, whose gorgeous heart-on-his-sleeve singing brings to mind both Al Jolson and Judy Garland, has found the perfect language in which to emote. Yiddish, the supremely visceral and poetic tongue of his ancestors, suits the vocal style of this volcanic, unabashedly romantic schmoozer the way cream cheese does a bagel. His "Mamaloshen" ("Mother Tongue"), currently at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater, is a beautifully conceived mini-history of the Eastern European Jew as dispossessed,struggling, occasionally rowdy immigrant. Using Paul Simon's "American Tune" as the connective thread among 17 selections, this intermissionless songspiel runs the gamut from lullabies to tales of sweatshop workers and Holocaust survivors. There are even Yiddish renditions of such unlikely tunes as "White Christmas," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and a rousing "Hokey-Pokey" -- the latter as part of a make-believe wedding celebration. Patinkin, clad in black and motionless behind a standing mike, opens the program with a thrilling musical mix that leaps from childhood to matrimony. He starts with a piece of the Simon tune, segues into the bedtime ditty "Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen" ("Raisins and Almonds"),soars through the love song "Mayn Mirl" (a Yiddish arrangement of "Maria" from "West Side Story"), and then moves seamlessly into "Yome, Yome," a conversation between a braying mama and her anxious daughter that ends with a visit to the matchmaker. The rest of "Mamaloshen" follows a similar path. One musical grouping conjures up a nuptial party, complete with Patinkin breaking the traditional glass underfoot; another weaves together Yiddish versions of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "God Bless America," both performed as passionate anthems before a huge backdrop of the American flag. One of the most moving, and certainly the most fully realized, of the singer's character studies is the plaintive "Papirosin" ("Cigarettes"), which chronicles the tragic life of a homeless orphan reduced to peddling cigarettes on the street in order to eat. The dramatically slowed tempo, the pleading, increasingly desperate quality of Patinkin's exquisite tenor, the way he curls his arms around an invisible burden as he sings about the boy's dying sister -- all of these things come together to create an indelible impression. You certainly don't have to be Jewish to appreciate this man's artistry, but those with a working knowledge of Yiddish will derive an extra dollop of pleasure from the proceedings. I grew up in a home where Yiddish was used primarily as a secret, kid-proof language; my experience at the show would have been even more resonant if the printed descriptive phrases projected on the backdrop at the start of each number had also included English lyrics. But Patinkin's intensely theatrical approach to singing, his cantorlike falsetto and rumbling baritone, his exacting way with words and gestures, allow you to grasp the basic meaning of each number. And for those left wanting more at the conclusion of the piece, Patinkin, wizardly pianist Paul Ford and virtuosic violinist Saeka Matsuyama end with a casual but no less brilliant string of the singer's English-language specialties. Highlights of Tuesday's performance included the wonderfully frenetic "Beat Out That Rhythm on a Drum" (Oscar Hammerstein's gloss on Bizet's "Carmen"), a charming commingling of Stephen Sondheim's "Everybody Says Don't" and Frank Loesser's "The Emperor's New Clothes," and a dreamy English-Yiddish finale of "Over the Rainbow" that left the huge crowd kvelling -- the Yiddish word for rhapsodizing.

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