He belts songs from about any style but is not a great singer; he makes people laugh but is not a great comedian; he comments on life's realities--happy and sad--but is certainly no philosopher. He's 51-year-old Mandy Patinkin, a Chicago-born showman of the top rank appearing in an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra sponsored special event. Patinkin held his large Hilbert Circle Theatre audience captive from his entrance in-drag--sporting chest hairs above his "cleavage"--to his final, feel-good medley, starting with "There's a Rainbow Round my Shoulder."

For two hours with no intermission, Patinkin was non-stop, assisted by his long-time piano accompanist Paul Ford, playing an ISO-owned lustrous black Yamaha studio upright. Both singer and pianist were miked and clearly heard everywhere. Typical backstage-artifact clutter, including a very tall stepladder, propped the Circle stage, effectively augmenting the show-biz aura (there is no curtain). Patinkin's opulent voice is a natural high-tenor, easing into a moderately controlled falsetto, which serves as his trademark. Thus it was interesting hearing those high pitches in "Some Enchanted Evening," from Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, a song written for bass-baritone.

Perhaps Patinkin hit his high point at "Bali Hai," another South Pacific entry which he filled with comic stalls, interjections and the highest falsetto to be heard from a "real" man. Though he uttered one "shit" and one "fuck" in his dialogue to show he's an entertainer for our time, his songs were free of the sexually suggestive. They were all, as a younger NUVO colleague seated with me observed, "oldies"--some including the patter songs of the Vaudeville era--such as "When the Wind's a-Blowin'."

But Patinkin astonished with the variety of his bygone material: from a session of "My New York," with two men pulled (at random?) from the audience to provide the song's "klip-klop" percussive support with tongue and upper palette (done to much laughter), to Harold Arlen's "If I only Had a Brain," ". . .a Heart" and ". . .Courage" from The Wizard of Oz. Before his final medley he moved into deeply sad nostalgia with an embellished "I Can't Remember Where or When." In any case, the audience happily sauntered out, flush with the excitement of encountering a species of entertainment not often seen in these parts.