Photos by Jeannie
Jackie Hoffman is on Fire! (Island)” at the Ice Palace
By Jeannie Lieberman
Motor mouthed, mobile faced manic purveyor of blue tinged Jewish
flavored humor burst ion the CG stage in a sparkly sequined sheath, the most
conservative of her “act”.
She opened with “Stop Making Out in front of me……..Start making
love on top of me” to set the tone (with the help of Music Director Bobby
Peaco) and “Lets get the ferries to Cherry’s, a voyage to the bottoms of the
sea” describing her accommodations at the Grove hotel bedspreads as “”crunchy
with DNA samples”.
With a voice as flexible as her material, Hoffman revealed a love
for Broadway musicals which she listened to as a young girl, specifically “No,
No, Nanette”. “By the time I was 8 I was a gay man”
She did in fact appear on Broadway in Hairspray, for which
she earned a Theaterworld award for those debuting on Broadway, Xanadu,
and the Addams Family, and The Book of
Liz, winning an Obie Award. Among her many films is Kissing
Jessica Stein, in TV Curb Your Enthusiasm,
among others.
She will again appear on Broadway in the upcoming
On The Town (“I was 19th on their list”). And will be doing
“The New Normal” a comic series for NBC which sounds redundant”.
She described the impact of the new Tupac
Shakur rap musical Holler If You Hear Me on
the blue haired, hearing challenged matinee ladies. “the lyrics are Ni—er,
Ni—er, Ni-er, Mother Fucker” which she repeated over and over as in the show,
funnier and funnier.
She describes herself as a “chronic masturbator”,
and “a bitter, self loathing coward. ... I’m not a lesbian, but I’ve
gone through menopause, so I’m angry all the time and I don’t like cock either!”…
a woman of a certain age. “I won’t tell you how old I am exactly, but I wish my
nipples were as sensitive as my gums”.
She lurched into a ditty “That’s the man for
me… not a doctor in a yarmulke, but a Puerto Rican busboy with tattoos, uncircumcised,
sleazy and cheesy, that’s the man fir me”. Before she got married she asked if
she could say “Fuck” in front if his parents. It was not a problem for her family
who are either dead or deaf. “It’s a mixed marriage – I’m Jewish, he’ happy” .
And the business of couples finishing each others
sentences is that “they really don’t want to know”.
Jackie describer a gay cruise she want on
during the High Holydays. “all you can eat and drink on a vessel designed to make
you puke…they booked me as a drag queen…it was so gay it made this room look
like a sports bar at a Mitt Romney gathering”. Offering “gay party etiquette –
you just take off your clothes and go!”
A song about plastic surgery, “I want
to be pulled, tucked, and lifted … until it doesn’t look like me.”, and another
“Fuck the silver lining, I’ll always find a cloud”…
Jackie is working on a tribute to another gay icon – Streisand – called
“Don’t”.
She thinks gay parent’s kids are just as rude as
straight ones and concluded the evening with a parody of Miss Hannigan’s nasty
“Little Girls,” from Annie, somehow working “vegan breast milk” into
the lyrics.
Much of her material was on the mark, but so raw it is unprintable,
rat-a-tatted into the accommodating crowd.
She promised “The kvetching continues, the whining will go on.”
Brava! Jackie, and Daniel Nardicio for this unique choice for hs
Icon Series.
Now buy her CD
