‘The Artist’ Blends Degas and Dollars, Murder and Mandy Patinkin
Mandy Patinkin always seems to be thinking about music, even when he is discussing a part that never required a note from his celebrated tenor. While other actors might need to feel a certain chemistry before committing to a role, he has to hear an inner melody.
“Can I sing with him?” Patinkin, who is 73, said last month. He was recalling what he asked himself when he met Aram Rappaport, the 38-year-old writer and director who was sitting next to him in the drawing room of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Conn., an art-filled 1901 Colonial Revival mansion. “Meaning, can he be my piano player? Meaning, can we make music together?”
Patinkin decided they could, and the resulting series, while not a musical, could easily be described as operatic in its passions and power plays. Created by Rappaport, that show is “The Artist,” a six-part historical drama that premiered last week on the Network, a free ad-supported streaming service Rappaport founded last year. Its cast includes not only Patinkin but also Hank Azaria, Danny Huston, Janet McTeer, Patti LuPone and other stage and screen luminaries.
Image“The murder mystery is the selling point and the entertainment factor,” Mandy Patinkin said of “The Artist.” But “the layers of reality,” he added, drew him to the script.Set in Rhode Island in 1906, “The Artist” stars Patinkin as Norman Henry, a secretly sentimental robber baron whose acquaintances include real historical figures like Thomas Edison (Azaria) and Edgar Degas (Huston), as well as the actress and model Evelyn Nesbit (Ever Anderson), who was the lover of the architect Stanford White. (The show also features Nesbit’s troubled husband, Harry Thaw, played by Clark Gregg, who murdered White.)
The beleaguered Norman is at the end of his wealth, his rope and, as it happens, his life. This isn’t a spoiler: Viewers learn immediately that he has gone to his grave — or, in his case, an unceremonious pyre — on the grounds of his own mansion (Hill-Stead stars in this role).
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