Amazin' Smith and Jones.

I'm in the front row for Tom Jones when this older gentleman comes out and introduces himself as Chuck Jackson. It occurs to me there's a legendary soul star with that name, but this must be a different guy. Otherwise, the crowd would go nuts. The gentleman then explains that he was on stage at the Apollo in 1965, when Dionne Warwick brought her new friend from England backstage.

I turn to see why people aren't making a bigger deal out of Chuck Jackson and discover that I'm attending Showtime for the A'pallored. Jackson is telling how a 1965 Apollo crowd initially refused to clap for Tom Jones when Jackson brought the young singer out on stage that summer night?before, of course, Jones finished to thunderous applause. Tom Jones won't be winning over that kind of crowd tonight.

Jones is probably honored enough to simply be another in a series of events leading to a March 28 spectacular that Quincy Jones is putting together?an event clearly so fabulous that there's no chance I'll be there. This is a fine consolation, even if I'm not too fond of Jones' recent work with Wyclef Jean. He still sounds great opening with "Sexbomb," and the crowd goes obligingly wild for the 60s standards.

And it's okay that he doesn't do "It's a Man's World," because he covers an old Chuck Jackson hit.

But the week's true great voice belongs to Yeardley Smith, previewing the one-woman comedy, Yeardley Smith: More, before its March 22 opening at Union Square Theatre. If you only see one celebrity detail her battle against bulimia and depression this year, make it the actress on whom any heterosexual male developed a crush while she was in the cast of Herman's Head. (If you have a crush on her as the voice of Lisa Simpson, then you are a pervert and will go to hell.)

Smith skips over the nude seminar episode of Herman's Head, but makes amends with an opening list of accomplishments that includes, "I've been naked on the internet"?specifically, in pics from 1989's Ginger Ale Afternoon, where Smith's too modest about her nude scene as the slutty Girl in the Abandoned Bus next door. "Thank God my arms are above my head," she notes, "so everything looks nice and perky."

That kind of stuff has me riveted in my seat. Smith, however, proves as candid offstage about her own neuroses. "I saw one woman get up to leave tonight," she says backstage, "and I was thinking, 'Oh, that's my first audience member who didn't stay'?but then I thought, 'That's okay, I've got all these other people here.' She came back, too."

See, a normal person would assume the lady was going to the bathroom?most likely after being reminded that she'd forgotten to purge dinner. Still, it's nice to see an actress being so upfront about her desperate need for approval. Or it's a shame if you're a tabloid hack missing out on the chance to cash in with headlines like "America's Favorite Cartoon Girl's Sexual Cravings for Married Men."

"I'd be a small potato in the tabloid world," says a mistaken Smith, "but I guess this trumps them. There's nothing they can out me with now. I always feel like apologizing to reporters when we meet after a show: 'I'm sorry, there's pretty much not a lot to ask. It's all right if you just go. You can say that we met.'"

Smith's performance also covers stalkers and cosmetic surgery, although this step-MILF certainly didn't overdo the eye tucks. "I was mainly a liposuction fiend," she clarifies, with the assurance of a wealthy woman who's charging people to hear about her personal problems. "There is some ambivalence about that," Smith admits. "I don't care about my own story half the time, so why should I expect you to?"

The answer, of course, is that Smith comes across as a charming gal who isn't trying to convince us that she's not a monster. But if she's still sickly competitive, she'll have a hard time beating Spalding Gray in this year's Depressed Monologist sweepstakes.

[jrt@nypress.com](mailto:jrt@nypress.com)