Victoria Clark & Ted Sperling: The Vicki and Ted Show

With her direct, crystal-clear soprano, fierce intelligence, and gentle warmth, Victoria Clark has deservedly risen to the top tier of musical theater actresses. Those star-making qualities come through loud and clear whenever Clark is front and center during The Vicki and Ted Show, her cabaret collaboration with Tony Award-winning musical director and orchestrator Ted Sperling, now debuting in a six-day engagement at Feinstein’s at the Loews Regency.

The show is designed as a celebration of the pair’s 30-year-friendship, which began when they were classmates at Yale University, and their love for each other shines through in their playful patter and pleasing duets, notably Stephen Sondheim’s “Our Time.”

But there’s no denying that Clark is the main attraction here, and she delivers winner after winner, including memorable versions of the standards “Right as the Rain,” and “I Got Lost in His Arms.” Clark has a rare gift among singers of fully inhabiting characters in song, and that talent is wisely brought to the fore in the song choices: the waitress justly proud of her work in Stephen Schwartz’s “It’s An Art”; the lovestruck tollbooth clerk in Jeff Blumenkrantz’s bittersweet story song “Toll”; Follies‘ Sally Durant in a gorgeous “In Buddy’s Eyes”; and especially as protective southern mom Margaret Johnson — the role that won Clark her Tony for Light in the Piazza — in a deeply-felt rendition of the glorious Adam Guettel aria “Fable.”

Clark also proves no less effective when she’s playing “Victoria Clark,” as evidenced by “Thomas,” a beautiful song written by Jane Kelly Williams to celebrate the birth of Clark’s now-teenaged son, and “Someone to Cook For,” a sassy number specially written for her by John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey that honors Clark’s culinary skills. Yep, she can cook too!