Bad Girls

Susannah Perlman leads revue of comedy and variety in special Purim edition.

As host and ringmaster of “Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad,” a comedy and musical revue that presented its Purim edition at Comix on March 12, Susannah Perlman fills the room all on her own, with frequent costume changes and a brassy presence.

She describes her own show, which has been running around New York and also touring for six years in all, as “Cher wrapped in Clay Aiken.” Don’t know about that necessarily, but Perlman makes the most of her cast, giving stand-ups Ophira Eisenberg and Michelle Collins their mike time, but also working them into the more sketch-like bits with her guests and herself.

Outside of Eisenberg and Collins, the show is a mix of burlesque, raunch and variety. With her back-up dancers, “Sister Schmaltz,” (Amber Bloom and Jessie Erian) Perlman’s star turn is singing a dirty hip-hop number, “Eat My Hamentashen.” Bloom and Erian also provide a lot of the atmosphere, with burlesque-inspired skits, like entering dressed as Hasids then stripping.

The special guests in the show, D’Yan Forest and “Mira Stroika,” were quite original and creative performers. Forest, at more than 70 years old, gleefully and impishly performed a ménage of stand-up and snippets of risqué songs, and earned a deservedly warm response from the audience. “Mira,” in character as an Eastern European minstrel character, seemed inspired by Andy Kaufman in her own creation of a misguided ethnic personality.

The mix of regulars and guests (Eisenberg is more frequently on the bill for “Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad” show), with Perlman tying it all together with her self-described “attention whore” tendencies, and the rapid pace of the acts and sketches keeps the energy level and the laughs high in the show -- and also likely keeps it fresh each time since it’s flexible enough to include different acts.