Witty Patinkin at play

SF Chronicle
October 14, 2001
By S.Winn
KIDULTS Mandy Patinkin Nonesuch, $18.99

"Kidults" may be the Mandy Patinkin album for people who don't much like Mandy Patinkin. For his fans, it's a pure, giddy pleasure. In taking on such garden-variety numbers as "If I Only Had a Brain" (from "The Wizard of Oz"), "A Tisket, a Tasket" and "Getting to Know You" (from "The King and I"), Patinkin gets to let loose and play with so-called family music to his irrepressible heart's content. The result is a collection that's at once fanciful, funny and musically astute.

Age or a prior investment in the way something ought to sound is no barrier to a listener's enjoyment here. Patinkin gives the songs and smart medleys a fresh lift without damaging the contents in the process. Paul Ford's beguiling arrangements consistently serve the cause. Singer Kristin Chenoweth, Patinkin's natural soul mate in making musical whoopee, is a bonus presence on three of the 16 tracks.

Patinkin's tricks of cranking up a warbly falsetto, basso-profundo growling and stretching tempos like taffy are all here, but tactfully deployed. He channels the "Wizard of Oz" film cast with his witty vocal ventriloquism, happily quacks and whistles in Frank Loesser's "The Ugly Duckling" and wanders wide-eyed through childhood itself by threading Loesser's "Inchworm" to "School Days" and Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." Patinkin throws a terrific tempo tantrum in Sam Gallup and David Rose's "Holiday for Strings." He and Chenoweth tear into a mighty vaudevillian spat in Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner's "How Could You Believe Me . . . ?" Patinkin goes at Murray Grand's "April in Fairbanks" with the ideal nasal tilt for lines such as, "Heavenly weather will turn your skin to leather."

This gifted, intuitively dramatic singer also knows when to pull back for maximum effect. He shades Stephen Sondheim's "Not While I'm Around" with a perfectly applied tremolo and adds a faint, antique hue to Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's "Rhode Island Is Famous for You."

"Kidults" rarely lingers over hothouse subtleties. "A Tisket, a Tasket" is done as a '40s crime caper complete with sirens and squawking police radio. "Singin' in the Bathtub" bubbles into "Singin' in the Rain," which pours into a bravissima Italian opera yelp. All right, everybody, jump in.