Playwright: Jackie Hoffman. At: Royal George Cabaret, 1641 N. Halsted. Phone: 312-988-9000; $25. Runs through: Dec. 21
She has a big sunny smile that can change without warning into a grotesque open-mouthed cry like a baby in a tantrum. Her voice is capable of etching glass and she's not afraid to use it. She may be pretty and elegantly-dressed, but she deliberately twists her face into funny expressions, and if she's noticeably fat or thin, she will call our attention to these "flaws." She will lament her mistreatment at the hands of parents, husbands, lovers, merchants, children and domestic animals, then vilify them by way of payback. She uses vulgar language and sprinkles her patter with Yiddish idiomswhether she's Jewish or not.
From Sophie Tucker to Belle Barth to Totie Fields to Bette Midler to Rosanne Barr, American female comedians have tended to style themselves along a limited range of personalities. But if you find those restrictions acceptableif you agree that "Season's Greetings" is Hallmark-ese for "You Killed Jesus," that carolers wield the refrain to "Adeste Fideles" like a street weapon, and that the correct response to the guilt invoked by charity appeals is to mock them for their manipulative self-righteousnessthen Jackie Hoffman, currently warming the cabaret room at the Royal George, is there for you.
Hoffman is not without her reasons for kvetching ( "bellyaching," to you goys ) . This former Second City alumna and award-winning veteran of several Broadway shows is a headliner in The Addams Family, now previewing in Chicago before moving to New York City, but claims to have been slighted in her onstage time. When the children and the butler get to sing more than she does, what's a chronic misanthrope to do but diss them and all their tribe? And while she's at it, jeer at gays, hets, oldsters, gentiles, Latinos and African Americans, fellow ( female ) performers, Jewish festival songs ( rhyming "Shevuoth" with "Jerry Lewis" ) , Christian seasonal anthems ( the obligatory "Carol of the Bells" spoof ) all in a little over an hour before closing with Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" ( in Yiddish ) and exhorting us to buy her CD.
How justified is her pique? We won't know until next week, when the critics weigh in on "AddFam." But grinches seeking escape from holiday cheer have always looked to the less-nationalized religions for comforthow many families dine on pastrami, falafel or chop suey every Dec. 25? Despite her aspirations to shrewish hostility, Hoffman's championing of her likewise cantankerous brethren is nothing less than a generously offered mitzvah.