Last night we went to see Mandy Patinkin in concert at the Strathmore Music Center in Rockville Maryland. It was an hour and forty minutes with no intermission. He performed mostly obscure (to us) showtunes and personal compositions with a single upright piano accompaniment. Let me say that I like most of the well known and popular showtunes we all hum to ourselves in the shower, but Patinkin’s selection of tunes from the middle of some musicals I have never heard of was exceedingly dull, tedious and for the $58 admission price just awful. Songs from the middle of a scene in a musical make sense in the context of the story, but extracted from that context, both musically and chronologically, it makes no sense whatsoever. From the very first number I sat there thinking this has got to get better. But as he sings in one piece, “If it can worse it will get worse…” It did.
The highlight of the show was when he sang three tunes, White Christmas, Maria, and some Sondheim song, in Yiddish. I had to chuckle at White Christmas in Yiddish, but will admit that the germanic sound of the words was just a little creepy in that context.
I was a good boy. I looked away from Marti as each piece ended, so I would not start laughing and so she wouldn’t ask me if I wanted to leave, I didn’t make faces, I sat there respectfully and clapped at the end of each piece. Turns out she was thinking the same thing, that it had to get better. Finally, as Marti looked at me and asked if I wanted to leave, it ended. We bolted for the door before the encore and I remarked that I now knew why there was no intermission, nobody would come back.
Run like the wind if you ever get offered tickets to one of these concerts…
Postsript: Marti points out that the house was packed and he got a standing ovation. I guess she looked back over her shoulder as we skedaddled for the parking lot. And we laughed till we cried all the way home. Something we have not done in months….
