Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin get Morristown Community Theatre season off to rousing start

ate Sloan, Julia Metzger and Gideon Irving traveled from New York to catch Mandy Patinkin and Patti Lupone in Morristown. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
ate Sloan, Julia Metzger and Gideon Irving traveled from New York to catch Mandy Patinkin and Patti Lupone in Morristown. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
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No glitzy costumes. No flashy sets. No orchestra in the pit.

Just two singers, a piano and a bass.

That’s all it takes to pack Morristown’s Community Theatre.

Provided, of course, that the singers are Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin.

ate Sloan, Julia Metzger and Gideon Irving traveled from New York to catch Mandy Patinkin and Patti Lupone in Morristown. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Nate Sloan, Julia Metzger and Gideon Irving traveled from New York to catch Mandy Patinkin and Patti Lupone in Morristown. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

They kicked off the theater’s 16th season on Saturday with about 90 minutes of show tunes that left one wondering: Who needs to sit through an entire Broadway show, when these two can bring the best of Broadway to South Street?

Their star power was so strong that it pulled a trio of 20-somethings from New York City to the wilds of New Jersey.

“I took NJ Transit for the first time!” said Gideon Irving, a Mandy Patinkin fan who accompanied performance artist Julia Metzger–a Patti Lupone fan–and composer Nate Sloan, who would love to write music for Patti and Mandy.

“It would be a dream,” Nate said. “It would be intimidating, and very inspiring.”

Gayle Schulman gave further testimony that the Community Theatre at the Mayor Center for the Performing Arts is on a roll.

“I came to a few shows last year and liked it so much, I became a member,” said Gayle, an elementary school librarian from Convent Station who attended Saturday’s opener with Eileen Preziosi, a retired kindergarten teacher from West Orange.

“It’s such a nice theater, you don’t have to go to the city. And the restaurants here are nice” in Morristown, Gayle said.

Before the show, they were entertained outside by the jaunty stylings of Timeless Jazz–Morristown students Gus and Peter Bacas, Ryan Gallagher and Anthony Galante. The quartet got a plug onstage from theater chairman Robert Mulholland, after a moment of silence honoring victims of the Sept. 11 attacks of 2011.

Saturday’s guest list included Bud Mayo, for whom the performing arts center is named; theater benefactor S. Dillard Kirby; Christopher Daggett, the new president of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; historian John Cunningham;  Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty; and town council members Alison Deeb, Rebecca Feldman and Michelle Harris-King.

Theater President Allison Larena expressed excitement about a season that will include 10 performances of The Nutcracker by the New Jersey Ballet, and shows by everyone from Paul Anka to One Man Star Wars.

Not bad for a 1937 movie palace that was on the verge of collapse when volunteers came to rescue in the mid-1990s, an effort that underscored the “Community” on the marquee.

A $7 million fund drive has underwritten expanded of backstage facilities and stage enhancements that can handle large-scale productions. Next up: Restoring the building’s original facade, and expanding the rest rooms, Robert Mulholland told the full house.

At Saturday’s show, Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin dazzled the crowd with their signature numbers from Evita, the 1980 show that established them as stars.

Other highlights included a South Pacific medley that showed off Patti’s comedic gifts in Getting Married Today and Mandy’s in Cockeyed Optimist; a poignant medley from Carousel, and a sensational song and dance number, April in Fairbanks (from New Faces of 1956), in which the headliners spun around the stage with panache and precision on rolling chairs.

It also took some fancy dancing behind-the-scenes to pull off the evening.

The season opener initially was scheduled for October, but Patti landed a role in the new Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

And so “we moved it up for her,”  Allison Larena said.

Patti was so keen on doing the Morristown show, Allison said, that she agreed to do it even though her Broadway rehearsals were scheduled to start Sunday morning at 10.

VIDEO: PARTY FOR COMMUNITY THEATRE’S 16TH SEASON

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