Review - Jackie Hoffman's A Chanukah Charol

The audience greets their star's entrance with a long round of enthusiastic cheers as she takes her place center stage and she, in turn, glares back at them with a look of unrestrained contempt. That's the charm of Jackie Hoffman's relationship with her fans. She always seems utterly annoyed at the prospect of being there and they love her for it.

But it's not Jackie Hoffman who speaks to them at the top of her show. No, it's the comic's stern and rumbling impersonation of Patrick Stewart, who, to those who don't give a damn about science fiction or Shakespeare, is best known for his one-man Broadway performances of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

If you were in a sentimental holiday mood, you might call Hoffman's A Chanukah Charol (which was directed and co-authored by Michael Schiarilli) a self-exploration where the comic learns to shed the cantankerous image that has made her cabaret appearances so outrageously funny. But no, her new show at New Word Stages has her kvetchier than ever, spending an analyst's hour hilariously recounting the smashed dreams of stardom that have plagued her life.

As narrated by Stewart, the tale is far more Broadway than Dickens; the set-up having Jackie Hoffman spending another Chanukah away from the family, preferring to be in the spotlight at a "synagig" at Temple Beth Shalom in Queens. But an inattentive audience frustrates her into walking off the stage and into her dressing room (the rabbi's office) where she laments the notion that her ethnic looks are holding her back. ("I've done three big Broadway musicals, accumulating twelve total minutes of stage time!") When she pities herself for merely being "a Jewish star," the ghost of Molly Picon appears from the label of a Manischewitz bottle, warning her to expect visits from three spirits who will show her the error of her self-loathing.

Though Shelley Winters makes an appearance as a potty-mouthed ghost of Chanukah present, the characters Hoffman dives into either come from her past (her traditional Jewish mother who takes pleasure in overfeeding her family) or from her and Schiarilli's particularly nasty imagination; a disabled Pinkberry delivery boy named Tiny Kim and a young Chasidic lad she instructs to buy her a giant bottle of Ambien displayed in a drug store window. ("The one that's as big as me?") The consistantly funny show also drops well-appreciated gags about Spider-Man and Mamma Mia as well as a peek at Hoffman's future success as the star of an exceedingly inappropriate reality television show.

On a personal note, I got a special kick from the scene where young Jackie dares to answer the phone during Sabbath dinner to receive word that she was just cast in her first professional acting gig, a summer at Hersheypark playing Plain Jane Wayne in Shootout at the Trailblazer Saloon. That production was also my first professional acting gig and I shared the stage with her as "Old Geezer." But I'm sure anyone experienced in theme park entertainment would get a laugh out of the way she dreamily romanticizes the opportunity to play, "Six shows a day, six days a week."

Photo by Carol Rosegg.

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