Jane White

When Jane White plants her feet on a stage and lets fly with her Shakespearean elocution, grand gestures and amusingly witchy hauteur, you know you’re in a regal presence. She proved it early on when she set off thunderbolts as the evil Queen Aggravain, Carol Burnett’s nemesis, in Once upon a Mattress, a musical fable that opened on Broadway in 1959. White’s performances, not to mention her family history (she’s the daughter of Walter White, who cofounded the NAACP), marked the fair-skinned singer-actor as a rather high-flown talent. Her later roles have upheld that persona; she’s acted in lots of classical drama and, in 2001, portrayed Solange LaFitte, a showy Parisian headliner, in the Broadway revival of Follies. White has even played nonsinging roles at the Met.

In her rare one-woman shows, White can truly let her hair down. Bobby Short, who adored her, helped arrange a Town Hall concert in 1977; three years later she opened Off Broadway in Jane White, Who? Now, more than two decades after her last cabaret appearance, she’ll be performing a one-off at Feinstein’s. Wicked humor and tragedy will fill the night air as White plumbs the words of Yip Harburg, Porter, Sondheim, Berlin, and Marshall Barer, who co-wrote Mattress. Don’t let the venue scare you off; for most of its current Monday series, including this show, Feinstein’s has lowered its exorbitant pricing to $25 and a two-drink minimum. For an hour of White’s sorcery, that’s a bargain.—James Gavin