We came here last evening to listen to that great voice which is Mandy Patinkin. Wow it was even better than we could have imagined.
His vocal range is incredible. He started with some old old Broadway tunes from the 40s and 50s. Then moves on and starts softly speaking these words without music:
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
So you say to yourself. No! He's not going to sing it. And, he doesn't. He just leads into the middle of another old Broadway tune. So you think, what was that? Well, it was a tease.
He starts having a dialogue with the audience about his marriage and wife. But then comes back to it. Now accompanied by Paul Ford on the piano. He sings the entire song. Bohemian Rhapsody. All the parts. Wow! Freddie Mercury would have been proud!
That's how the evening went. Interspacing old show tunes with some more recent melodies. He sang a few from Steven Sondheim's "Sundays in the Park with George". It was a show he was nominated for a Tony. The best of the night, was his singing of Oh Shenandoah. What made it special was his stopping midway to recite the first part of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. He goes back to Oh Shenandoah, then finishes the second half of Gettysburg Address and the last verse of Oh Shenandoah. Absolutely beautiful.
Surprisingly no tunes from Evita. A show he won the Tony for his role of Che, and made famous with Patti Lepone. He finished the evening with a tune from the movie Ragtime and the music of Randy Newman.
There were two curtain calls. He and his pianist Paul Ford looked exhausted after a non-stop ninety minutes. We left feeling as if we had just enjoyed something special. This was our first time to the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and we were very impressed.