Last time Mandy Patinkin sang in downtown Chicago, he was scheduled in the middle of a weeklong blizzard that had paralyzed cities all up and down the East Coast. Planes were grounded, trains were canceled and automobiles — one of which contained an increasingly desperate Patinkin heading out of New York City — became stuck in drifts.
Having finally bribed his way on to one of the few flights that left New York late that Tuesday afternoon in January 1996, Patinkin arrived in Chicago only hours before curtain time at the Shubert Theatre, necessitating a 40-minute delay to allow his harried technical crew to throw the show together. To the delight of a patient hometown crowd that had been forced to freeze their heels on the street outside, Patinkin eventually walked out on stage carrying part of his own set.
For his current performances, “I am planning,” says Patinkin, “to start out for Chicago a little sooner.”
Accompanied by Paul Ford on the piano, Patinkin will bring his theatrical concert to the Auditorium Theatre for this latest visit. There will be five performances (including one on New Year’s Eve), beginning Monday.
Snow not withstanding, this icon of American musical theater still proceeded in 1996 to deliver an intense and critically acclaimed performance that combined classic Broadway ballads, his signature interpretations of the work of Stephen Sondheim, Yiddish songs, the work of assorted young composers, and tales of growing up in Chicago. At one point, Patinkin told his fans that the recipe for his Aunt Lillian’s kichel would be sent to anyone who left their details with the house manager, who was then besieged; but everyone eventually got a promised recipe in the mail.
This time around, seekers of Patinkin cuisine will probably be told to buy the book. Mandy’s mother, Doralee Patinkin Rubin, has recently published the “Jewish Family Cookbook.” Thanks to the considerable media clout of Patinkin, mother and son have been hawking the collection of simple and traditional recipes around the talk-show circuit, cooking up a storm on “Good Morning America” and selling plenty of copies along the way.
“Mom takes to the attention like a duck to water,” Patinkin says. “She was on David Letterman’s show. She fed Rosie O’Donnell radishes. She’s been having the time of her life at 70 years old — I can’t even get her on the phone anymore.”
Patinkin’s show will be composed mainly of new material. He has been throwing songs by Paul Simon and Harry Chapin into his Broadway-oriented live mix and will also be doing material from his new all-Yiddish album (he contends that the non-Yiddish speaker will understand every word but refuses to explain how).
If you miss him this time around, Patinkin says he will also be back in Chicago later in 1998 with a full orchestra, as part of a short tour of major American cities in which he will sing entirely Yiddish songs.
So what did the bean counters say about the former star of “Chicago Hope” now concentrating on material with less-broad appeal than traditional Broadway fare?
“I’ve never been one to worry about what the bean counters think,” says Patinkin. “Since I was given the ability to sing, it’s my duty to preserve my heritage. That’s the only professional goal I have ever really had.”
His attention to personal goals is certainly genuine. He quit his television series to be with his wife and children in New York, and he’s very selective about which movie projects to undertake. Patinkin’s next dramatic appearance is to star in a new limited-run musical at the Manhattan Theatre Club based on “Captains Courageous,” but he says he won’t take the show to Broadway because a lengthy commercial run would inevitably hamper the other things he likes to do.
That includes promoting Mom’s chow and hanging with the many aunts and uncles who live in the Chicago area.
But no more gifts for the audience this time around? Don’t count that out.
“Because it’s my home,” says Patinkin, “different things always happen in Chicago.”
– – –
One of the belated consequences of the exchange program in the late 1980s between the League of Chicago Theatres and the Union of Russian Theatre Workers is the current visit of Kerill Strezhnev, director of the Yekatrinberg State Academic Musical Comedy Theatre of Russia. Strezhnev, who met Light Opera Works managing director Bridget McDonough when she was in Russia in 1990, is directing the Evanston-based troupe’s production of Franz Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” opening at the Cahn Auditorium on Saturday.
Speaking through a translator, Strezhnev says he is a big fan of American and English musical theater — he directed the Russian premiere of “Candide” and staged a Russian-language version of “Oliver.” Given the Slavic motif of “The Merry Widow,” it’s a perfect match for the inevitable cultural twists provided by a Russian director, Strezhnev says.
In the former Soviet Union, relaxed resident companies tend to rehearse shows for several months. At Light Opera Works, Strezhnev has only a few weeks.
“The dark side of the long Russian rehearsal process is that a show can lose its nerve and pulse over all those months,” Strezhnev says. “That’s not true here. I am amazed at how much American actors can absorb so quickly.”
And do the classic melodies of “The Merry Widow” cross cultural boundaries?
“We all fall in love,” Strezhnev says. “And it’s hard everywhere to keep love strong amidst the madness of a world that’s always rushing from one thing to another.”
