Patinkin offers songs, stories, ‘a nice time’
Mandy Patinkin fans who want to hear his stories need to catch him live, because he will not be writing a memoir.
“I can’t think of a worse idea,” he said, laughing, in a telephone interview. “I’m not a writer. I tell stories. I sing the stories that other people wrote and I tell stories that I can remember and I just have a nice time. My life and my memories and my memoirs, they go into my songs and the characters I play, and they make my heart beat. They keep me alive. That’s what I use them for. I don’t need to tell you where I ate my first Snickers.”
The stage and screen star is bringing his solo concert, “Being Alive,” to the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday.
What will he be singing? You’ll have to go to find that out.
“I never tell what songs I’m going to do because I change my mind sometimes and I don’t want somebody to drive God knows how far to hear X, Y or Z and I do ABC,” he said. “So we’re going to hear a lot of story songs written by an eclectic group of gifted geniuses.
“I’m just the mailman. I just deliver them and I put them together so that we can all have fun. Because after three years of pandemic, I wanted to get back out there and have fun. I think my audiences wanted the same thing, and I’m really grateful for having it to offer.”
Patinkin’s high-profile roles include indelible performances in such musicals as “Evita” and “Sunday in the Park with George.” On the silver screen, he brought vengeful swordsman Inigo Montoya to vivid life in “The Princess Bride.” Most recently, he played detective Rufus Cotwesorth in the Hulu murder mystery series “Death and Other Details.”
The pandemic unexpectedly expanded his fan base, thanks to an ongoing series of sometimes viral videos of him and his wife, actress and writer Kathryn Grody. In the addictive shorts, they
bicker, dance, tease each other and promote progressive causes.
Gideon Grody-patinkin, one of their two grown sons, shoots the videos and often can be heard asking them questions. Grody-patinkin also edits and posts the videos. The couple have more than 2 million followers on Tiktok.
The series began during the shutdown part of the pandemic. Grody-patinkin had been recording videos, which he referred to as the “family
archives,” and asked if he could post one on social media, Patinkin said.
“And he puts it out there and it goes crazy,” he said. “And all of the sudden, we realized that at a time when most of us were terrified of dying, literally, and too many certainly did, whatever he was asking us and however we were answering it were giving people a chuckle and sort of a break. And we felt like if we’re helping people, you know, you’re a jerk if you stop doing
that. And so we just kept it up, and that’s all she wrote.”
He’s grateful to be able to make the videos, which also sometimes shed light on causes that are important to him, including the work of the International Rescue Committee.
He’s also delighted they have raised Grody’s profile. People have started recognizing her on the street, he said, even when she’s wearing a facemask and has tucked her distinctive fluffy white hair under a hat. And her performances of “The Unexpected 3rd,” a solo show that is a work-in-progress, have been selling out.
“I always knew the world would be a better place if they got a little more of Kathryn,” he said. “She’s getting a kick out of it. And the young people love her. They just love her, because I think she makes people not afraid of getting older. She’s got so much vinegar and energy and whatever those words are, she’s got all of it.”
The videos have so much of a following that the three of them have started doing live shows.
“People come out in droves. We sell out. And I can’t understand it for the life of me,” he said, laughing. “There’s no show, there’s no songs, there’s no dance, there’s no band, there’s no orchestra. I don’t get it. I don’t know what’s going on. But they just say shut up and keep swimming; that’s what I’m doing.”
He also is drawing good-size audiences for “Being Alive.” He hopes lots of folks will come see him perform it at the Tobin Center.
“Tell people if they’ve got nothing to do to come on down, I promise them I’ll give them a good time,” he said. “If they hate it, they can go to sleep or they can leave. Just come.”