Tovah Feldshuh in a Nutshell

The amazing Tovah Feldshuh is a lot of things: dramatic actress, stand-up comic, agile clown, lover of good English, and in some ways smarter than The New York Times. She knows that the man wanted to be known as Bernard Shaw and not, as the said newspaper and all sorts of people would have it, as George Bernard Shaw. The one thing she is not is a natural-born singer.

She did go to Sarah Lawrence College, and learned a thing or two elsewhere as well. She calls her show Tovah Feldshuh in a Nutshell, and I bet she knows Hamlet's remark, “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space,” for she carries on with the aplomb of someone who feels herself the queen of infinite space—even though the space at Feinstein's at Loews Regency holds only 140 at capacity, as it was at her opening on March 4.

The crowd filling that attractive boite was clearly discerning enough to know that at nine that evening, Feinstein's was the place to be for sovereign entertainment. What? To hear someone who is not really a songstress in a nightclub where the performers, fittingly, usually include terrific singers? Yes, to get an artist who instead is actress, comic, clown, lover of good English (I know this from talking to her) and who, by George, gets Bernard Shaw's name right. And who, on top of that, is smart enough not to pretend that she is a great singer.

So what does her show comprise? Mostly various comic monologues, some of which have to do with singing (e.g., the impersonation of an Italian operatic voice teacher); a lot of lusty Jewish jokes, some even in Yiddish or Hebrew; some effective quick costume and hairdo changes; some savvy accent comedy; the recitation of a funny E. E. Cummings poem; and now and then, yes, a song. But only four times are they songs we recognize: “That Old Black Magic,” “Never Never Land,” “On a Clear Day,” and a Gershwin medley into which she manages to sneak a Jewish joke—a musical one, to be sure.

It is almost all solid fun, but if you want an authentic chanteuse, this is not the place to look for one. Yet Tovah has a rich voice, well deployed from falsetto to contralto, albeit mostly in speech. Perhaps you may think of it as recitative.

Of course, she knows that to put across a song you must be able also to act it out, and that she can do with a vengeance, so that you almost don't notice anything else. Besides, she knows how to make full use of the mike, which nowadays, like it or not, is a goodly part of singing. And she also has an able pianist in Mathew Eisenstein, which helps not a little.

Thus what you do get is hearty laughs from a canny raconteur and genuine actress, who, in a civilized theater culture, would find no shortage of acting jobs. Dramatists, directors, and producers: Catch Tovah in her Nutshell, and transport her to where she really belongs: in a play. Indeed, in any number of plays extant or yet to be written.

John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News.