Jane Lynch, in Red Bank Thursday, loves a cabaret -- now that she has one

Jane Lynch was wrapping up her six-season stint on "Glee" as Sue Sylvester, the ruthless cheerleading coach with a heart that pumps acid, when she was offered four nights at the New York supper club 54 Below last year.

"They said you can do your act," Lynch tells NJ Advance Media in a recent phone interview. "I said, 'I don't have act, but I will get one.'"

As you would expect from a woman who specializes in weirdly compelling characters, this isn't your classic cabaret heavy on torch songs and Broadway standards. Lynch, who brings her show "See Jane Sing!" to Red Bank's Count Basie Theatre Thursday night ($29-$129, countbasietheatre.org), asks the audience to join her "on a journey of songs that have very little to do with one another. There was no discernible theme other than I liked them."

Those songs, performed with a five-piece band, includes "Skeletons of Quinto" and "Blood on the Coal," the overly earnest folk songs from "A Mighty Wind," the Christopher Guest mockumentary in which Lynch co-starred; a swinging version of the traditionally mournful "Far From the Home I Love" from "Fiddler on the Roof" (sung with Kate Flannery from "The Office," an old friend joining Lynch on tour); and "Little Girls" from Broadway's "Annie," in which Lynch recently played Miss Hannigan.

Though she's best known for "Glee" and those Guest mockumentaries ("Best in Show," "For Your Consideration"), she got her start performing live at Chicago's The Second City and Steppenwolf Theatre (and, she notes, many Chicagoland basements). "I didn't realize that I was missing it," she says of her return to the stage. "I really thought I was done with it until I was asked to do 'Annie' on Broadway. Who says no to that?"

Lynch is taping a pilot for CBS called "Angel from Hell," a half-hour comedy from Tad Quill of "Scrubs" in which Lynch's character claims to be the guardian angel of a young perfectionist who thinks her new pal is nuts -- and yet freakishly prescient. She also returns this summer to host NBC's "Hollywood Game Night," but she knows gigs like "Glee" and characters like Sue Sylvester don't come around that often.

What will she miss most about Sue, other than the track suits? "The range of emotions," she says. "She went from A to B in a second. I loved that she was so vicious and then the nicest and most compassionate person. There wasn't so much in between. I do have areas of myself that are all or nothing."

Vicki Hyman may be reached at vhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickihy. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.

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