Jackie Hoffman’s hilarious Jackie Five-OH! is like sitting on the stoop with the neighborhood yenta who never stops kvetching, except that this yenta has the voice of Ethel Merman and the acid wit of Elaine Stritch and the stoop would most likely be outside Joe Allen or Angus McIndoe.  She’s currently playing Grandma in The Addams Family.  That show was front and center in her litany of complaints which ping-ponged between comments about her decidedly non-gay audiences to the lack of a song for Grandma to the lambasting the show received by the critics.  As for the unfortunate missing showstopper, Ms. Hoffman offered one of her own and it was an acidly funny ditty, absolutely perfect for Grandma, alas, never to be heard in the show. She blames this for her not getting a Tony nomination while other Broadway “grandmas” (notably Angela Lansbury & Carole Shelley) did.

Wearing a chic Art Deco-inspired cocktail dress, she described her very un-chic, very Jewish upbringing as an overweight yeshiva girl who managed to get entry level performing jobs which led to stand-up and eventually to Broadway (Hairspray, Xanadu), plus some film work.  Queen Latifah, who replaced Hoffman in a film, comes in for a riproaring rant because Hoffman lost her SAG medical coverage when she lost that movie job.  Even poor Kristin Chenoweth comes in for a pummeling while Rite-Aid, of all places, is lauded as her sanctuary.

Accompanied by Bobby Peaco, who provided humorous background bits and helped keep the pacing fast, Jackie Five-OH!—her “first  50^th birthday”—was sharp, very New York and extremely funny.

Joel Benjamin
Cabaret Scenes
December 6, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org