My Name Is Mandy Patinkin. You Interrupted My Benefit Show. Prepare to Donate $25,000.
It seems that Patti LuPone and the infamous picture-taking incident of 2009, when the Gypsy star had a photographer kicked out of the show, may have finally been outclassed—and by one of her dearest friends and closest associated acts: Broadway legend, noted swordsman, and CIA operative Mandy Patinkin.
According to Page Six, Patinkin stopped the special concert he was giving to benefit the National Yiddish Folksbeine Theater this week to chastise a couple attempting to take their seats in the front row about half an hour after he began. “Why are you late?” Patinkin wondered from the stage as the theater filled Jews—who had paid a lot of good money to be there so their grandchildren’s Hebrew school class could one day sit through a matinee of The Wise Elders of Chelm in it’s original language—wished that Patinkin would just get back to singing “Have I Got a Girl For You” from Company in four different octaves (writerly extrapolation, mine).