Mandy Patinkin Brings Live Songbook to West End

Acclaimed American actor and tenor Mandy Patinkin (pictured) will bring his solo show Mandy Patinkin Live in Concert to the West End’s Duke of York’s theatre for a short run from 8 to 18 January 2009.

Patinkin (born Mandel Patinkin), who has enjoyed an illustrious career on stage and screen, first rose to prominence as a musical theatre actor, winning a Tony Award for his role as Che in Evita on Broadway in 1979. In 1984 he received another Tony nomination for Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, and in 1989 starred in the first of a number of solo shows, Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Dress Casual.

Patinkin’s other stage credits include the Tony Award-winning musical The Secret Garden and, in 1990, Chichester Festival Theatre’s musical adaptation of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, entitled Born Again and directed by Peter Hall. On screen, he has starred in films including Ragtime, Dick Tracy, The Princess Bride, Men With Guns and Yentl (for which he won a Golden Globe), while his television roles include Dead Like Me, Criminal Minds and Chicago Hope.

The West End show will feature Patinkin singing the “great American songbook”, including numbers by Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Harry Chapin and Cole Porter. Accompaniment will be provided by veteran Broadway pianist Paul Ford, who played for the original productions of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, Passion, Assassins and Into the Woods.

Mandy Patinkin Live in Concert is produced by Michael David (Jersey Boys) and follows Rupert Goold’s production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, starring Michael Gambon and Little Britain’s David Walliams, which finishes at the Duke of York’s on 3 January 2009.

– by Theo Bosanquet