THE WICKED STAGE and the gag reel

by Rob Kendt

My favorite Lily Tomlin story is the one about the time she worked at Howard Johnson's on Broadway before she made a splash on Laugh-In. While all her fellow waitresses--aspiring actresses themselves--would hitch up and modify the restaurant's shapeless starched uniforms into a more flattering guise, Tomlin went the other direction: She wore her uniform "regulation," complete with clumping rubber-soled shoes and cardboard headpiece with hairnet, and would even make use of the intercom microphone to announce her entrance to patrons as "The Waitress of the Week."

I would give a king's ransom (whatever that is) to go back in time and witness that inspired bit of restaurant performance art--but then, one of the things that's so great about Tomlin is that, whether she's on the big or small screen, or in that cavernous barn the Ahmanson Theatre with Jane Wagner's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, she's still human-scaled, no matter how broad she's playing or how many multitudes she contains within herself. The intimacy and subtlety of her work makes it all feel like a shared joke between friends. And since she's played waitresses and other miscellaneous service employees so often over the years (in Altman's Short Cuts, for one), in a sense I can see a full picture of her at that Howard Johnson's--and, perhaps more significantly, that image makes me think of diner waitresses, and of the inevitable actors-in-food-service treadmill, in a different light. This kind of self-effacement may be Tomlin's greatest gift to us: She's not showing off her extraordinary mimetic skills when she's morphing through the 12 characters of Search, she's showing us each other.

Originally conceived and mounted during the Reagan years, Search represented a glance back over the shoulder at a revolution that had turned--at burnt-out ERA feminists, at New Age spiritualists who'd turned to peddling tchotchkes, at drugs that had wasted bodies and minds. Now it's less a glance over the shoulder than a time capsule; Tomlin and Wagner's brand of comedy--full of nutty factoids, delicious groaner puns, pithy observations about science and the meaning of life, ironic digs at the pace of modern life--feels dated, but in a way I love. Watching Search now made me realize how much our culture misses the smart, humane, self-aware voice of the Hair and Laugh-In generation--folks that opposed a clearly disastrous war with a sincerely Dionysian, fun-loving spirit, whose unlikely blend of earnestness and zaniness was tonic to a stultified entertainment culture, and who, at their best, spent as much time matter-of-factly building their own alternative establishment as defiantly shaking a fist at the Establishment. Other voices from that era have withered or soured, but Tomlin's is among the few that's stayed sharp and resonant (Altman's is another, on a good day). And though Tomlin and her signature Search have inspired another generation or two of comics and solo performers, particularly but not exclusively women, few can match her empathic wisdom, or the particular wit that pegs the often painful absurdities of our human condition with a warm, unironic embrace--indeed, the kind of quietly subversive wit that led a young waitress in late-1960s New York to pay deadpan homage to the Platonic ideal of the American food server. I'll raise my bottomless coffee mug to that.

• The strain of performing the two-and-a-half hour Search has occasionally taken its toll on this still agile 63-year-old. On opening, she stopped mid-scene to soothe a dry throat with some water, standing at stage's edge and ad-libbing to the audience, "So… how are you?" She returned to the set and--in a recovery line I've heard she's used a few times in this run--said, "I hope you'll keep this to yourselves. If Equity finds out I've broken the fourth wall, they may take away my card." And there have been murmurs among some theatregoers that the work might have stood some cutting. I think the problem is less length than structure: The second act's long narrative, about a trio of feminist activists awakening in their various ways from the dream of having it all, is a brilliant, heartfelt playlet unto itself, and it feels like a departure, or a destination, and its ending feels like a capper… but then it's back to bag-lady Trudy and blueblood Kate (in my favorite piece of Wagner's writing, the cocktail klatsch about a lost suicide note) to tie up the loose ends. I felt some in the audience shift with impatience; I for one could felt like I could have stayed for another two hours. And Tomlin must not be too tired out by it, after all: After doing two shows Saturday, she stopped by the Evidence Room to catch its late-night serial The Strip. She seemed to enjoy herself.

• Buffy, we hardly knew you. After seven seasons, the quintessential comedy/horror/soap/action series sputtered out wistfully with a closing episode that made the show's implied feminist empowerment message laughably explicit. It was almost camp--I loved the cut to a little girl at the plate ready to swing her bat, newly and mysteriously inspirited by some kind of universal Slayer mojo, but I loved a little less the ambiguous shot of a woman seeming to fight back against domestic violence. For a show distinguished for so long by playfully serious ambition--in terms of narrative, genre, even casting--this quick grrrl power montage was over-reaching, but the reach was downward. Still, when Buffy was good, there was nothing better on TV. I particularly relished the casting over the years of such theatre folks as Harry Groener (as an aw-shucks evil mayor), James Leary (the lovable flap-eared demon Clem), Juliet Landau (as a deeply weird retro vampire), Danny Strong (as a terrified, then slightly more confident teen loser), Armin Shimerman (as a tight-assed, humorless principal, always slightly a step behind), Lindsay Crouse (as a chilly scientist with dubious motives), K. Todd Freeman (as a gimlet-eyed slickster vamp), and Richard Werner (as a disturbed ventriloquist). I have to imagine it was a good gig while it lasted.

• Speaking of Buffy guest stars, Camden Toy (typically obscured by makeup in various Nosferatu-like demon and vamp guises) is hoped to recur in Crime Scene's David Lynch takeoff, Cherry Hills. This weekend's offering, titled Fire Walk With David Lynch's Cherry Hills, is promised feature a "giant albino midget" played by Joe Jordan, who recently bared all for the Scene's wicked take on Adaptation… Also this weekend, the Boston Court, Pasadena's new state-of-the-art 99-Seat theatre, hosts an open house to show off its facilities. Co-artistic directors Jessica Kubzansky and Michael Michetti will be on hand, as will producing director Eileen T'Kaye and theatre benefactor Clark Branson. It's at 70 N. Mentor in Pasadena; it will be held noon-5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, May 31 and June 1. (God, it's June already?)… Back when I was in the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop--sorry, it's now called Academy for New Musical Theatre--the quest was always on for popular works that were in the public domain that could be adapted into musicals. Hans Brinker and Grimms were getting a workout when I was there. I don't know if that's the same impulse behind a couple of premieres at Musical Theatre West's "First Annual Festival of New Musicals," but I wonder if the world really needs Ben Hur: The Musical and Robin Hood: The Untold Story, which will have staged readings at Long Beach's Carpenter Center on May 30 and at the Long Beach Playhouse on June 14, respectively. (The inevitable Aesop was on May 5.)… Speaking of unlikely topics for musicals, how about Lovelace: The Musical? I guess Debbie Does Dallas opened the, er, floodgates. This new tuner, starring Family Ties star Tina Yothers, with songs co-written by the Go-Gos' Charlotte Caffey, will have a workshop production at Theatre of NOTE June 20, 21, 22, and 27. I could make a joke about throats and singing, but I'll just leave that to your imagination.