Jackie Hoffman

Fairycakes

October 26, 2021

This mashup proves to be both too convoluted and too long at two hours and 20 minutes. Beane has, however, given the play a top flight send off with a starry cast of some of the most distinctive and unique actors on the New York stage: Julie Halston, Jackie Hoffman, Arnie Burton, Ann Harada, Mo Rocca and rising stars Kristolyn Lloyd (Grammy Award winner for "Dear Evan Hansen") and Jason Tam ("Be More Chill," "Lysistrata Jones," "Marry Me a Little," etc.) The biggest problem is that as these performers all have their own styles, the production seems to pull in many different directions with no one appearing to be in the same play. Most satisfying are the lavish and eye-filling costumes in a rainbow of fabrics and colors by Gregory Gale which take your mind off the play and should win awards at the end of the season. [more]

Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings)

July 9, 2021

In what might just be the best stage role of her career, Jackie Hoffman plays the multi-faceted Ariana in E. Dale Smith’s "Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings)" at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre in Chelsea. Sitting in place, attached to a hefty rope, she takes the audience and her co-star, Kelly Kinsella as Margo Peterson, “substitute fly captain,” on a journey of a life not well, but interestingly, lived. [more]

Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish

February 23, 2019

The property is now more than a half-century old. But this production makes it seem as though the 1964 iteration were merely an English-language version of a classic from even longer ago. There’s a greater feeling of immediacy than perhaps ever before. Hearing the characters speak and sing in the tongue that their real-life 1905 contemporaries would have used is deeply moving. What a shame that so many speakers of Yiddish from decades past never got the chance to experience the musical in this guise. [more]

Fiddler on the Roof (The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene)

July 28, 2018

Steven Skybell’s Tevye warms up from a salt-of-the-earth, everyday philosopher to the much put-upon tragic existential hero upon whom God—to whom he speaks frequently—has heaped much tsouris. By the time he has lost a third daughter Khavele, this time to a Russian Christian, his interpretations of the songs and his line readings are heart-breaking. [more]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

May 1, 2017

But the Broadway version of Charlie doesn’t really come alive until we’re introduced to Augustus Gloop (F. Michael Hayne), the fat little German boy who finds the first of the five gold tickets, and whose mother (Kathy Fitzgerald) sings along with him--as wurst links burst forth from his pockets, and the almost always, lively choreography by Joshua Bergasse, suddenly features clogging steps, with dirndls and lederhosen. [more]

Once Upon a Mattress

December 22, 2015

Jackie Hoffman is famous for her combination of sarcasm and wit in a small, rubber-faced package and John “Lypsinka” Epperson, for his uncanny way of taking lip-synching to the heights of great art. Hoffman imbues the character of Princess Winnifred with New York street smarts, despite coming from a Swamp. (Well, maybe NYC is a swamp!) Lypsinka’s Queen Aggravain is, amazingly, the most possessive mother ever and at the same time the most self-involved human in the kingdom. She does not want her simpering son, Prince Dauntless (the sweetly shlumpy Jason Sweet Tooth Williams), to marry—ever!—but if he doesn’t marry, no one else in the kingdom can, either. [more]

“On the Town” Revisited with Misty Copeland

August 29, 2015

Then, there’s the new cast member, Misty Copeland, the newly minted American Ballet Theater principal ballerina, who has taken over the role of Ivy Smith, the catalyst for the daffy, warm-hearted plot of the show. Formerly inhabited with sweetness and steely technique by another ballet star, Megan Fairchild, the role of Ivy Smith fits Ms. Copeland perfectly. She makes it her own the moment she’s murmurs “Who, me?” in “Presentation of Miss Turnstiles,” the witty send-up of beauty competitions. [more]

On the Town

November 13, 2014

This On the Town, with 29 musicians and 31 actors, begins with a huge American flag and the singing of the national anthem, just as would have happened every night of the original run back in the 1940's during World War II. The show begins and ends at 6 A.M. at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Three sailors, Gabey (played by Tony Yazbeck for the third time), Ozzie and Chip have 24 hours shore leave to see all of the Big Apple before shipping out to Europe. Each wants to see the sights, both cultural and female. [more]