Mandy Patinkin in Concert. The Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D to

19 November, 2023.

5*****: William Russell.

The voice may not be in its prime – he is after all now 71 - but this series of concerts given by Mandy Patinkin, the actor and star of Broadway musicals, are thrilling and display his skill at handling an audience to perfection. He is best known here perhaps as the spy boss in the television series Homeland but his Broadway credentials as star of musicals and as an actor are impeccable. Like all concerts of this nature – he presents a programme of popular American song by pretty well everyone you can think ot – it has been rehearsed to the hilt but while it will be more or less the same each time you know that he also responds to the audience so each evening is its very own. He is accompanied at the piano by Adam Ben David and the rapport between them is obvious from the start – otherwise the stage is empty except for a chair, more of a prop than something to sit on. He prowls round, takes copious drinks of one assumes water, mops his brow with a towel on top of the grand piano and works his way through the great American song book to the delight of the audience. The Lyric is a substantial theatre and he has mastered the trick of seeming to talk to each member while talking to everyone. It is what one has to call a master class in the art of the solo performance. At the end when we wait for the inevitable one last song he springs a surprise. He says that his son, who had seen earlier performances in America, had suggested he did not need to credit the lyricists and composers as he went along but recently had told him he was wrong is saying that so he should credit them. Out comes a sheet of paper and he read the list. Then he says he will sing one more song by Harold Arlen and E Y Harburg, two Jewish Americans whose parents had fled the pogroms in Russia. He sings it in Yiddish. And that you will never have heard done before. It seemed the perfect end to a perfect evening.