Oh, Mandy

What Patinkin's thinkin'

by A.D. Amorosi

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If you're a theater hag, you don't ask Mandy Patinkin — a Tony Award-winner with historic roles in Evita, Sunday in the Park with George and The Secret Garden on his résumé — questions about The Princess Bride. Instead, you use this precious time to talk about his new musical revue with fellow Broadway legend Patti LuPone. But after Patinkin immediately asked about my first name, things got sidetracked.

City Paper: So Mandy — how about your first name?

Mandy Patinkin: My grandfather Max Patinkin's Yiddish Hebrew name was Menachem, which was Hebrew, and Mendel was his Yiddish name. They took Mendel and called me Mandel on my birth certificate. But ever since I was a baby they called me Mandy because, quite frankly, they thought it sounded too old.

CP: You've talked seriously about getting out of television due to its violent nature. What do you think about violence in the theater?

MP: If it's handled in an artful fashion — or metaphorically, if it's artfully handled — I don't have difficulty with it.

CP: You're the front guy for this MandyPatti project. Do you write?

MP: No. [Laughs] I tried writing as a kid. That was enough. [Laughs] What I do is plagiarize. I use these great geniuses' gifts and the words they put together to create my concerts or my little pieces within the bigger piece. Same with the show I'm giving birth to in Philly with Patti. It's a lighthearted, figurative journey with two souls that is, in its essence, a revue. But we're hoping you'll follow the journey through songs familiar and unfamiliar and words spoken and sung. There's some balls-out concert stuff, and then we go back to the story form.

CP: Why Patti?

MP: She's a dear old friend and the most amazingly gifted performer. Along with Bernadette Peters, whom I'm working on another show with, it doesn't get better than these women. I'm the luckiest guy on the planet.

CP: Sunday in the Park with George helped save musical theater from the overblown nature of the previous decade. Feel like a savior?

MP: I don't think I'm responsible. I was lucky to be a passenger. The writers should always take the credit. I did have greater participation in the process through the extensive workshops. But at the end of the day, I was taking my lead — but in a collaborative form, not to say I didn't do anything — from Steve Sondheim and James Lupine.

CP: What's the MandyPatti YouTube moment?

MP: I'd love to not choose a moment because of the way it's structured: endless moments, some we've experienced, new ones we hope to re-experience in a new way every night, some we never imagined. I'm in the game to be shocked. I love the accident. But the very final second before the lights go out, that last bit — whatever look we have on our faces — that's what I'd love to see again. I love that you called it a YouTube moment. And so I thank you, Angelo.

CP: And I thank you, Mandel.

An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin

Runs Oct. 23-29, $60-$75, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org