Tom Wopat has always been an intriguing mixture of velvet and sandpaper, and both sides of this musical cloth are abundantly evident in Love Swings, his highly entertaining and slightly overstuffed new show at the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room.

Indeed the Broadway veteran is perhaps a bit too determined to show off every side of his personality, as he careens through musical decades and genres with quicksilver speed -- even displaying his own songwriting and guitar-playing ability with a little tune called "Thailand Sea" that he wrote while making a science-fiction film.

Fortunately, when you've got the goods -- as Wopat does -- too much of a good thing isn't so bad. A strikingly effective re[...]