LOOSE LIPS : Singer-Actor Mandy Patinkin Talks About His Latest Move to ‘Dress Casual’ for the Symphony

Wear a T-shirt to the Performing Arts Center, and tennis shoes or less. Heck, bring along a wine-drunk German shepherd if you like: It’s Mandy Patinkin’s “Dress Casual” show!

The actor/singer isn’t one to stand on formality or convention. More than the T-shirts he indeed performs in, the 38-year-old Tony winner has quickly built a reputation for live shows that are as unfettered, maxed-out and nakedly emotional as they get.

According to the Washington Post’s David Richards, Patinkin’s “Dress Casual” is “the ideal concert for people who are of the opinion that Liza Minnelli, as an entertainer, tends to hold back.”

Patinkin may be best known on this coast for his film work--his credits include “The Doctor,” “The Princess Bride,” “Alien Nation,” and “Yentl”--but most of his acclaim has come on the New York stage. His debut singing role, as Che Guevara in “Evita” in 1979, yielded his Tony, and he picked up another nomination for his lead as George Seurat in Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.”

And even those familiar with that side of Patinkin could hardly expect the range of emotion and characterization he brings to his rich tenor/baritone vocals when left to his own devices. On his current album, also titled “Dress Casual,” he wrenches every bit of emotion from the Sesame Street tune “Bein’ Green,” while he tackles the Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin tongue-twister “Tschaikowsky” as if he were Danny Kaye with a mouthful of Tabasco.

In concert he tackles standards, the odd popular song or two--Randy Newman’s “Marie” is a favorite of his--and a wide array of show tunes, from the songs of “Pal Joey” and “Carousel” to some of Sondheim’s buried treasures, such as the medley on his “Dress Casual” album from Sondheim’s 1966 “Evening Primrose.” His program is subject to change from night to night, or even song to song, not that he’s beyond even interrupting a song. He might then egg the audience into a frenzy of mock adulation, or launch into things equally unpredictable. And that’s just the way he likes it.

“I’ll probably always call the show ‘Dress Casual,’ ” Patinkin said by phone from his Manhattan apartment recently. “The intention is just to be as relaxed as I possibly can be, as the audience can be, to be as informal as possible. I always mix it up so I and the audience don’t get bored.”

He typically sings accompanied only by pianist Paul Ford, but he’ll also be backed by the Pacific Symphony in shows Friday and Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. “It might be a little less loose because we have to rehearse stuff with the orchestra, but I wouldn’t say it will be much less loose,” Patinkin predicted.

Though he had sung since he was a child in a temple choir while growing up in Chicago, Patinkin avoided doing so professionally for much of his stage career, having hated the experience of auditioning for one musical in the early ‘70s. A decade later, after “Evita,” he was being roundly hailed as one of the finest vocal talents the Broadway stage had produced.

He began doing his one-man shows in 1989 at the urging of friends after he’d sung at a couple of benefit shows. The solo shows took off and resulted in a monthlong sold-out run of “Dress Casual” on Broadway. It made its road debut last year in a four-month tour that ended Dec. 15. His current mini-tour includes dates in Florida.

While some performers might find it daunting to have the success of a show resting solely on their shoulders, Patinkin gets the opposite feeling.

“Maybe it was a little less daunting to me, because if it didn’t work, it was like you know instantly : ‘Well, that’s my fault. This must suck. So, OK, we’ll leave. We won’t bother you anymore--you can go home now.’ You find out pretty quick, whereas if you’re in a big piece with a lot of people you can maybe think, ‘Well, maybe the writers haven’t done their job right, or maybe the other actors aren’t doing well or the music’s not right,’ and it drags on. But here, you pretty much do have yourself to blame.”

That said, Patinkin also feels the responsibility for a good performance doesn’t lie entirely with him.

“To a certain degree the audience also helps make the evening what it is. I’m not alone out there; I’m with the whole audience. So I don’t feel that much a one-man show. To me it’s more of a conversation.

“I do find that people in different places can be very different. We’d go to towns that we thought were going to be a disaster--I don’t want to say where because I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. . . . We’d get there and the hotel smelled like bad fish; it was just a horrible place, the theater looked awful. But then we’d go out there and have the time of our lives that night, with the greatest audiences we’d come across.

“Other places where we thought it might be great and people would be wonderful, it just didn’t go anywhere. It was fine, but not as exciting as we might have hoped for. So then it just became more like a job, where other places it was a great party. It’s a Ping-Pong game. You never know.”

There’s no great scheme behind his solo tour, he said, “My reason really was no more than this: To see how I liked doing it. I’m new to it. I’d never done this before, and so far, so good.”

Though the “Dress Casual” show affords him more freedom than his other work, he doesn’t necessarily like it better.

“I don’t find it to be more rewarding or less. The rewards are different. Whether it’s the concert stuff or making records, or doing movies, or doing stage plays--be they musicals, Shakespeare or straight plays--I find them all completely different. And I find they feed each other. When I do one thing it makes me appreciate the other, just when I may have been losing my appreciation for it.”

He also thinks his disciplines affect each other and that his acting has particularly influenced his singing.

“If you asked me if I was an actor or a singer, I would think of myself first as an actor. That’s what I care the most about, to tell you the truth. I don’t care that much about singing, but I do care about the words that I sing, the stories and the content of those stories.

“Those are the kinds of songs I try to choose, ones that have tales or stories that talk to me or have imagery or ideals that I strive for and or believe in, whether they be complicated or simple. I very much look at these things as words in a play that are just coincidentally on musical notes. I always look at the words first, and I’ve never found that if I like the words or story of a song that the melody doesn’t follow up to be good.”

Patinkin thinks it works to his advantage that he wasn’t professionally trained as a singer. “I don’t think that ignorance is bliss, but for me I like not knowing what my limitations are musically because that way I’ll try anything. I think if I knew I could only sing a G or an F or a U, Z or X then I wouldn’t try the other letters of the musical alphabet.”

He doesn’t read music, but he has his own method for tackling the demanding melodies of Sondheim and others.

“I sit down with the piano player, he plays out the notes . . . one note at a time with one finger. He plays the exact notes for the exact durations I’ll sing them, and I tape it. Then I walk around with that until I learn it. It takes me a few times listening to the tape and then I wait until I burn the words into my brain.”

The dramatic interpretations Patinkin gives to his “Dress Casual” material have drawn divided critical responses. To GQ’s Jonathan Schwartz they are “heroic new ways of speaking from the heart through various forms of popular song.” To the ever-charming John Simon, theater critic for New York magazine and the National Review, they are “hog-calling” and the “ultimate narcissistic self-gratification.”

What response does Patinkin have to such disparate views?

“None at all. I don’t read what the critics write about my shows.” He already is sufficiently critical of himself, he said, “more so than any critic could ever come near.” But whatever doubts he may have about his work remain his own: “They’re nothing that I need to share.”

Of the films Patinkin has done, his favorite by far was the 1987 Rob Reiner-directed fantasy “The Princess Bride,” in which he played swordsman Inigo Montoya.

“It’s kind of my dream come true,” he said. “I enjoyed the company in making the film the most; the people were wonderful. I love what the story of the film said, and I love the way the whole thing came out. It seems to be for children of all ages. I think it will live on, and I’m thrilled to have been a part of it.”

He had somewhat less to say about “Alien Nation,” the 1987 film co-starring James Caan in which Patinkin played an extraterrestrial policeman who lives on sour milk: “I needed the money, called my agent and he got me the job and I did it.”

He said his consideration of the work he takes on is evenly divided between art and money. “I try to turn down certain kinds of things I don’t like, and if I have the luxury of making those decisions, I do. But if I have doctor bills and food and rent and school fees to pay, and I don’t have the luxury at that time, I sometimes have to do things I would otherwise not have chosen to do. That’s the real world. Actors don’t live in a fantasy one.”

At times he has turned down both kinds of work to be with his family. “I’ll often pass up a project because I feel I need to pack in some family time, when I’ve been away too much. That’s the most important thing to me.” Patinkin is married to stage actress and writer Kathryn Grody. They have two sons.

While there are several projects he would like to do this year--including a new production of “Carousel”--at the moment he’s facing one of those dry periods all performers hit, when there aren’t any offers coming in.

“And right now I’m very hungry to do a play or a film with other people. I want to be with other people. All I’m doing now is preparing more music for ‘Dress Casual,’ working on that on a daily basis.

“My dream about ‘Dress Casual’ was that it would be a little like Hal Holbrook’s (one-man dramatic presentation) ‘Mark Twain,’ where I could just fill my pockets with songs, and go do them whenever I had some free time, as I seem to now. People seem to really enjoy it, and I really enjoy it, so I intend to keep doing it.”

Who: Mandy Patinkin, appearing in “Dress Casual” with the Pacific Symphony as part of the orchestra’s pops series.

When: Friday, Jan. 31, and Sunday, Feb. 2, at 8 p.m.

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts: San Diego (405) Freeway to Bristol Street exit. North to Town Center Drive. (Center is one block east of South Coast Plaza.)

Wherewithal: $16 to $47.

Where to call: (714) 556-2787.