Patinkin wows sold-out crowd as MCA gala opens season

The Maine Center for the Arts’ annual gala Saturday night was a time for an experience above the norm, and featured performer Mandy Patinkin certainly provided that.

The festive evening began with a reception, held in a large white tent in the parking lot adjacent to the MCA building on the University of Maine campus in Orono.

Inside the tent, strung with white hanging globe lights, patrons dressed in formal wear mingled while sipping drinks and nibbling on noshes. The appetizer table, complete with an MCA ice sculpture, had a harvest theme, with Indian corn and fresh vegetables placed as decoration.

The gala had a different format this year with an earlier performance preceding the gala dinner held at Wells Commons. John Patches, MCA’s director, said the reception was the biggest ever, with 350 turning out for that event before the performance, and 260 for the dinner after the show.

Inside the Hutchins Concert Hall, the sold-out concert opened with a presentation, as UM President Peter Hoff and Robert Lingley, chairman of the MCA advisory board, presented the first MCA achievement in the arts award. It went to Wilma Bradford of Bangor, a board member and a driving force in the development of the MCA. In future years, the annual award will be known as the Wilma.

An overwhelmed but pleased Bradford told of how she first had the idea for a performing-arts center 25 years ago, and of how it took a long time to come to fruition.

“I can’t believe it’s 10 years old, and it’s already wearing out,” she said, referring to the center’s upcoming renovations.

But all this was just the warm-up for the main event.

Patinkin ambled onto the stage, placing a flower arrangement on each side.

Casually dressed in a cranberry pullover, black pants and white running shoes, he drank in the audience’s enthusiastic applause before launching into a trio of songs by his favorite composer, Stephen Sondheim: “I’m Here,” “Live, Laugh, Love” and “Everybody Says Don’t.”

The Broadway star also had a liberal dose of songs from “Kidults,” his new Nonesuch album. Audience favorites included “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” and “If I Only Had a Brain,” from “The Wizard of Oz.”

As a special treat for the Maine crowd, he revived his Tony Award-winning role as Che in “Evita,” singing “Requiem for Evita/Oh, What a Circus” in honor of Patti LuPone, his co-star in that musical and last year’s gala star.

Besides sharing the stage with Paul Ford, his accompanist and musical collaborator, Patinkin also used puppets. During “Holiday for Strings,” he sang with Jonathan Schwartz, an aggressive red-haired puppet named after a New York City radio personality. Then he and two Mandy look-alike puppets squabbled angrily in Danny Kaye’s signature piece “Triplets.”

Patinkin was also a talented storyteller – sometimes tragic (recounting his view of the Sept. 11 attacks) and sometimes comic (describing the turmoil involved with selecting his new stage outfit, the telling of which took nearly as long as an act in any play he’s been in).

The audience even got drafted into the act. Patinkin got them, in their finery no less, to dance along while he sang the “Hokey Pokey” in Yiddish. Also, they echoed the chorus while he attacked “Trouble,” from “The Music Man,” with evangelical fervor.

But mostly the crowd provided one of two things: thunderous applause or rapt silence. During the closing block of eight Sondheim songs, and the encore of “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” and “Children Will Listen,” the only sounds to be heard were Ford’s plaintive piano and Patinkin’s amazing vocals. The audience’s silence spoke volumes.

Patinkin closed by telling of his Mandy Patinkin Critical Issues Fund, proceeds of which are divided equally among the Sept. 11th Fund, Doctors Without Borders, Americans for Peace Now (which seeks an equitable solution to the Middle East conflict) and Pax (which promotes solutions to gun violence).

He then parted with a line from his Inigo Montoya character from “The Princess Bride,” before he dashed off to the MCA lobby, where he stood with a cardboard box to accept contributions for his fund and shake hands.

About a sixth of the audience was off to dine on lobster bisque or carrot soup, salmon mousse strudel, petite chicken breast Wellington, kugel, four-cheese quiche and chocolate fantasia.

But more than two hours of Patinkin left fans of musical theater already well sated.