Hoffman untamed

Jackie Hoffman is well armed with schtick.

At her friend Stephen Colbert’s wedding, his bride, Evelyn, tossed her bouquet into the crowd of celebrants. When it didn’t land near her, Ms. Hoffman threw two things: herself on the floor, and a temper tantrum.

“It’s a shtick of mine,” Ms. Hoffman, 65, explained in a Zoom interview. “I’ve done it at several weddings. You throw yourself on the floor and you pound and kick and say, ‘Why, why, why?’ It’s in the arsenal.”

And then there was the (in)famous “damn” after Laura Dern won the Emmy for best supporting actress in 2017. Ms. Hoffman had been nominated for her role as Mamacita, Joan Crawford’s loyal maid in “Feud: Bette and Joan.”

Customarily, the nominees who don’t win smile, nod their heads, and make believe that their guts were not just ripped out of their bodies in front of a worldwide audience. Not Ms. Hoffman, who mouthed “damn” two or three times for the camera.

One critic called her reaction the best moment of the night. But not everyone got the joke. A few people believed she was being a bad sport. Not so, Ms. Hoffman insists. “Like I said, it was in my arsenal. I asked Ryan Murphy” — the creative force behind “Feud” — “the night before. I said, ‘Do you think I could do this?’ And he laughed and said ‘yes.’

These are just two examples of Ms. Hoffman’s no-holds-barred, take-it-to-the-limit sense of humor, ubiquitous whether it’s on or off-Broadway (“The Addams Family,” “On the Town”), film (“Shiva Baby,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”) and television (“Only Murders in the Building,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and of course “Feud”).

But Ms. Hoffman really is at her best (and most untamed) in her periodic solo shows at venues like Joe’s Pub in downtown Manhattan, where, unhampered by a script, she’s able to unleash her comic demon quick wit.

But this Zoom is less about her humor and more about her Yiddish. Ms. Hoffman, who starred as the matchmaker in the Yiddish Theater Folksbiene’s production of “Fidler Afn Dakh” (“Fiddler on the Roof”), will reprise the role when the production moves to Los Angeles early next year.

Before that, though, she will lead the cast as Rivka in a concert presentation of “Di Yam Gazionim!” (“The Pirates of Penzance”) on October 25. It is a version of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta originally adopted by the late Al Grand and performed to great acclaim in 2007. This new production features additional material by Alan Lewis Rickman, who also directs the production and stars as Der Groyser General — the Major General.

Ms.Hoffman said she’d never worked with Mr. Rickman before, “but I’ve always asked him for help when I’ve done Yiddish. I did a variety show way back in the day, for which I asked him to translate the final scene from ‘Casablanca’ into Yiddish. We did that together. So we’ve been friends for many, many years — and I don’t know if his serving as my director will end that.”

Ms. Hoffman came to the show in a very simple, straightforward way. “They asked me. I said yes.

“I think they had a staged live production many years ago” — that was the 2007 iteration — “and they asked me to be in it but I said no. But this is Yom Kippur season, so I was able to make amends, repent, and accept this version.”

Her Yiddish is “passable,” she said. “I kind of understand what I’m saying. My mother and my aunt left an indelible Yiddish mark on me growing up. I heard what my mother called kitchen Yiddish, and I heard that my whole life.”

Her upbringing in Queens was “very Jewish. We attended Young Israel of Windsor Park. My mother always kept a kosher home. We kept Shabbas. I was the youngest of four and the first to attend yeshiva. My mother had had it by then trying to instill Jewishness in us and so enrolled me in yeshiva.

“I went to Hebrew Academy of North Queens, and then, when we moved to Long Island, I went to North Shore Hebrew Academy. So I had a hardcore Jewish education.”

Dad was a graphic designer who worked in advertising and was not as frum as mom. “Though he was loving and warm, he was not into the Yiddishkeit as much. He had a good neshuma.” A good soul.

“He really got into it later but would object to it when we kept the lights on all Shabbas. He would run around the house turning lights off and yelling ‘LILCO! LILCO!’” (That’s the Long Island Lighting Company.) “He would call religion voodoo.

But eventually he came around. “He had no choice. My mother was very powerful.

It was a happy childhood, she said; no Pagliacci, no clown laughing on the outside while tears flow within. “I’m often a tragic, unhappy human being,” she deadpans. “But I had a happy childhood.”

Ms. Hoffman realized she was funny when she was 5 years old and ran around the house singing “You Make Me Feel So Young.” “Everyone laughed though I didn’t know why,” she said.

While she performs in various media, “I think the most rewarding and the most frightening are the solo shows. They are kind of one-woman musicals combined with stand-up stuff.”

Accompanied by a pianist, she sings and pokes fun at many things, including at least once at an unnamed reporter for a Jewish publication who supposedly asked her if she worries that the good year she was having would not continue.

And for the record, I do not remember asking that.

“Di Yam Gazionim!” (“The Pirates of Penzance”) will be performed at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, at Symphony Space on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There will be supertitles.