Whining in the Windy City: Holiday Edition at Royal George Theatre

Chicago Tribune - Recommended

"...Assuming you are willing to bare your soul for a paycheck (and Hoffman is willing, so long as that check doesn’t go to any charity other than herself), the status of the much-maligned Broadway character player is indeed ripe for satirical explication. Hoffman actually spent many of her formative years in Chicago working at the Second City — which surely sharpened her top-drawer comedic delivery and her droll lyrics — but her little Monday night amusement is mostly the expression of a Manhattan worldview that doesn’t extend many blocks beyond (to use Hoffman’s preferred term) The Broad Way."

Chicago Sun Times - Recommended

"...Calling your Jewish grandmothers, one and all, who will check their foreheads for fever and then begin wailing "This is not good for the Jews!" (unless they can sing "White Christmas" in Yiddish instead). And calling all other grandmothers, who will consume the spectacle, the scatology and the very angry (if also very funny) content of Jackie Hoffman's 75-minute one-woman show, "Whining in the Windy City: Holiday Edition," and wonder if they are watching "a character" or an exercise in the rawest self-exposure."

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...more often than not, her apparently complete lack of social filters is exhilarating. She reminds me of those blue comediennes who used to make records for stag parties--especially when she's riffing on talking dirty in front of in-laws. She can be endearingly chauvinistic about the fact that Jews wrote all the good Christmas songs, but she doesn't back down from salting her own people's wounds, either. All in all, it's a gleefully nasty rush. Just one thing: be sure to turn off your cell phone. If it rings during her show, she'll rip you a new one."

Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended

"...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?"