Following his solo album “Experiment” (Nonesuch, 11/94), which used a sequence of songs to tell a love story with no published scenario – the listener was left to fill in the details – in this new collection, Mandy Patinkin and Eric Stern juxtapose songs with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim. In the introduction, Jonathan Schwarz describes a scene backstage at the opening night of Carousel in 1945, when the 15-year-old Sondheim “wept abundantly into the fur sleeve of Mrs Oscar Hammerstein”, and here is Patinkin singing both parts in “If I loved you”.
The whole selection is rather weepy and Mandy Patinkin exposes the raw edge of his voice, the upper register fluttery in several other songs written for soprano (two numbers from Passion, “Bali Ha’i” from South Pacific and bizarrely “When I grow too old to dream”, the late Evelyn Laye’s song from The Night is Young – the title song, done in the movie with great charm by Ramon Novarro, would have suited him much better).
In “Pleasant little kingdom”, a song cut from Follies, and the subsequent “Too many mornings”, he takes on the role of Ben, rather than that of Buddy which he sang so memorably in the exhilarating “Follies in Concert” (RCA). Patinkin is one of the most charismatic singing actors in music theatre today but I think he should stick to the baritone range, he sounds so much more at home, as for instance in the very effective arrangement of “Beat out dat rhythm on a drum”. “A kiss to build a dream on” is a nice discovery, a song by Harry Ruby, Hammerstein and Bert Kalman, cut from A Night at the Opera and revived for the 1951 The Strip.'