Or it so seems. Every so often, those same obliging hands take on lives of their own, becoming angular and weaponlike. They turn threateningly on the woman to whom they belong, a peppy chanteuse who has hitherto appeared to have every single gesture in firm control. She's a pro, and of course she keeps singing. But she cannot disguise the rebellion going on, a revolt conducted by her own body parts.

This representation of a woman losing control is executed with the supreme discipline of a Balanchine dancer by Lypsinka, the cult cabaret performer now appearing at the Westbeth Theater Center. The show, her first solo effort in seven years, is called ''Lypsinka!: The Boxed Set,'' and the suggestion of captivity in the title is no doubt intentional. This enameled-looking creature is definitely a prisoner of sex, though not a la Norman Mailer, and what a fascinating, funny and disturbing spectacle her incarceration becomes.

The timing of Lypsinka's comeback is providential. At a moment when models in fashion magazines are looking more and more like Stepford wives, cosmetically and surgically perfect and lobotomized, and starlet-style glamour is again being presented as something next to godliness, here is Lypsinka anatomizing feminine artifice -- and its dangers -- like no one else.

The alter ego of a man named John Epperson, Lypsinka came into being in the early 1980's, a time when deconstruction was still largely thought of as what you did to derelict buildings. What Mr. Epperson created with his mute stage persona, who moved her mouth to artfully arranged recordings of songs and movie dialogue, was clearly something more than the usual drag act; this was not just an instance of a boy who enjoyed being a girl.

Instead, Lypsinka shows a gimlet eye for the mechanics of the feminine mystique as manufactured for everything from all stripes of Hollywood movies to Las Vegas lounge acts. Although always impeccably wigged, gowned and made up, it isn't the false eyelashes and push-up bras that make Lypsinka such an artful illusion-spinner.

Far more important are her very careful, and sometimes quite subtle, arrangements of gestures, postures and expressions. For ''Boxed Set,'' a sort of ''greatest hits'' show directed by Kevin Malony, the star more than ever registers as the sum of so many well-groomed parts.

Lips, eyelids, a beauty mark are all traced in glitter and seem ready to assume autonomous life. They do: a mouth pursed into a seductive moue suddenly folds into a lopsided slash; eyes focused in concentrated, audience-captivating stares slide perilously sideways. The image-making accouterments have taken over the person inside.

The music in ''Boxed Set'' comes mostly from the 1950's and 60's, the twilight years of an exaggerated, rigid femininity already verging on parody and soon to be eclipsed by an era of minimal makeup and bralessness. (Lypsinka's wardrobe suggests Dior's New Look by way of Caesar's Palace.) With the exception of a few warhorse anthems like ''I've Gotta Be Me,'' the songs are usually obscure, culled from recordings of club acts and the sort of musical movies rarely found at Blockbuster Video.

Sometimes the numbers are upbeat, arm-swinging songs about showbiz, the kind you associate with Doris Day, Nanette Fabray and Dinah Shore. Others are frankly louche: double-entendre-laden ditties that give off a whiff of stale whiskey and staler perfume. While Lypsinka's voices are as varied as the singers to whom she lip synchs (I couldn't begin to identify who they all are), they all come to seem like natural subsets of the same persona.

Which is a large part of Lypsinka's point. The happy, peppy proper girls and the brazen bad girls are flip sides of each other and made of the same synthetic materials. What's more, the masks they all wear harden into grotesqueness with age. As Lypsinka presents it, beguiling, fiery youth, embodied by the voice of Natalie Wood in ''Gypsy,'' isn't so far from Gloria Swanson's demented recluse in ''Sunset Boulevard.''

In the show's most vivid sequences, Lypsinka answers an exhausting series of telephone calls in the voices of film goddesses like Elizabeth Taylor (in ''Butterfield 8'') and Joan Crawford (in ''The Best of Everything'') and lesser-known heroines of B-movie melodramas and horror flicks. ''Valley of the Dolls'' is, of course, also represented, as is the television show ''Bewitched,'' which in different ways portrayed women as out-of-this-world creatures.

The speed of the ringing phone sounds and the segues between voices become faster and faster. The overall impression is of a kaleidoscopic nervous breakdown, and you become aware of just how much the notion of the hysterical dame dominated Hollywood's portrayal of women. No wonder poor Lypsinka seems on the verge of collapse, though whether into a passive puddle or homicidal mania is uncertain.

This is executed with a precision that verges on the mathematical, and the same finesse is evident in every aspect of the production, right down to Jim Boutin's shimmering vintage Vegas set and the shifting cinematic lighting by Mark T. Simpson.

With corresponding savvy, Lypsinka doesn't end her show with a climactic bang but with a droll ellipsis. The encores and the curtain calls keep coming, trailing off to find Lypsinka looking dazed and vaguely bewildered. She appears bemused by the cheering audience beyond the spotlight, as if she had drifted onto the stage by mistake. ''What am I doing here?'' she seems to be asking. ''Who am I, anyway?'' Which is, of course, what she's been saying all along.

LYPSINKA!
The Boxed Set

Created and performed by John Epperson; directed by Kevin Malony; sets by Jim Boutin; lighting by Mark T. Simpson; stage manager, Bradford Louryk. Presented by Tweed TheaterWorks and Russell Scott Lewis. At the Westbeth Theater Center, 151 Bank Street, West Village.