Jane Lynch brings her 'See Jane Sing' show to the Kate

June 24, 2016 12:00 am • Last Updated: June 24, 2016 1:58 pm

By Kristina Dorsey
Features Editor

Let us consider Jane Lynch's exuberantly expansive showbiz resume. She has acted in movies, from "Best in Show" to "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" to "The Fugitive." She has starred on TV, most famously as the inimitable Sue Sylvester on "Glee." She has hosted "Hollywood Game Night" and the People's Choice Awards.

Well, she's taken on a new facet of performing: cabaret act.

She has created the stage show "See Jane Sing" in which she and her talented supporting cast of players perform an entertainingly wide range of songs. As she says at the start of the show, "Join me on a musical journey through a world of songs that have nothing to do with each other."

Indeed, the show boasts distinctive takes on everything from Frank and Nancy Sinatra's "Something Stupid" to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" to Irving Berlin's "Mr. Monotony." Lynch also performs tunes from "A Mighty Wind," one of the Christopher Guest comedies in which she has acted.

She is joined onstage by Kate Flannery, whom fans of "The Office" know as booze enthusiast Meredith; singer Tim Davis, who was the vocal arranger for "Glee"; and the Tony Guerrero Quintet.

On Tuesday, they'll wrap their mini-tour with a show at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook. Yes, it is sold out, but you'll still be able to see it next year; it's being filmed for "The Kate." That TV series features concerts held at the Hepburn center and filmed by the theater and CPTV to air on stations around the U.S. The second season of "The Kate" is scheduled to begin in February. It will air here on CPTV at 10 p.m. Fridays. (The next Kate performance to be filmed is Maurice Hines on July 26.)

Lynch spoke by phone earlier this week on a day off from the "See Jane Sing." She was in Washington, D.C., ahead of last night's performance at the Kennedy Center.

When Lynch was playing Miss Hannigan on Broadway in 2013, the 54 Below club asked her to do her act there. Only problem: she didn't have an act. But she was sufficiently intrigued by the idea that she created one:

"I had just done 'Annie' on Broadway, and I had not been onstage — you know, I started out onstage — but I hadn't been onstage probably in a couple of decades. I got the bug again. I was re-infected with the theater bug. So when (54 Below) asked me, I knew I was afraid because I didn't have an act. I thought: I'm going to do this. I take it as a challenge. It feels absolutely right, like it's the next thing. My first phone call was to Kate Flannery, who has been with me ever since.

"That was about two years ago. We've been touring it for about a year and a half, a smattering of dates. Then, this June, we're doing 22 gigs in 29 days.

"The Kate is the absolute last one, and it's the one we're most looking forward to, no offense to the other gigs, but because we get to film it. We're really thrilled to be at the Katharine Hepburn theater. It looks like a wonderful space."

On having "See Jane Sing" filmed to air nationally on "The Kate":

"We're probably going to retire (this show) after this tour. We didn't want to end it without having a copy of it. We were so thrilled when they offered to do it, and we jumped at the chance."

On singing a version of Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" in "See Jane Sing":

"It just struck me one day, 'Wouldn't it be hilarious if three very white people who have no business rapping did "Anaconda"?' And we do. I have so much fun. I'm a big Nicki Minaj fan. I think she's a genius on so many levels. When I saw that video, I was like, 'Okay, I must do this.'"

On Kate Flannery, whom Lynch has been friends with for years:

"She has an amazing voice. She has a really big, belty beautiful voice, kind of a throwback ... We have been signing together, on and off. We would do charity events together.

"She had this one song we do together called 'Far from the Home I Love,' and it's from 'Fiddler on the Roof.' We do it in a very Borscht Belt, brassy-broad style, as opposed to the aching melancholy song that it is in the musical. She brought that onboard, she found that arrangement, and, actually, she's responsible for a lot of the fun in the show. She's the comic glue. She's sexually inappropriate with the audience. She's kind of what Kate is, which is open-hearted and funny and stealing focus from me all the time."

On playing Sue Sylvester in "Glee":

"I got to say some of the most heinous things a character ever said. I'm forever grateful to Ian Brennan, who created the character and wrote most of my dialogue. It was a real blast to do that. They gave me so much dimension and so much to do. I got to remake the 'Vogue' video, so come on!"

Among her many film roles, Lynch portrayed Julia Child's sister in "Julie and Julia":

"That was a joy to do. I got to work not only with Meryl Streep but Miss (Nora) Ephron, who I miss terribly and who became a friend. I was very lucky to do what turned out to be her last movie."

Lynch will be in a new Christopher Guest movie called "Mascots" (no word on a release date yet):

"It's about non-professional mascots for Triple-A baseball teams and college basketball teams, that kind of a thing. This happens in real life, too — at the end of the seasons, they all come together and they do a competition. They all do a little routine as their mascots. ... My mascot is Minnie the Moose, and it's (for) a community college baseball team in Vermont. I'm actually retired because I had a devastating injury. I held the splits for way too long, and I ripped my groin muscle. So I now have one leg three inches longer than the other. Now, I'm a judge. Now, I sit in judgment ...

"You always have kind of a (scene) partner, and my partner in this one is Ed Begley Jr., who plays Donny the Donkey, the only anatomically correct mascot, and he is hilarious. The first time I heard what his ideas were was when we were shooting, so it's always a test of the ability not to crack up when you're working with Ed Begley and he hasn't told you what he is going to do."