Actress Lily Tomlin became more relatable
with each memory lapse during a performance Saturday night at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Matthew Palm writes.
Lily Tomlin showed Saturday night why she’s been making America laugh for nearly 50 years. And even the occasional memory lapse as she presented a greatest-hits compilation of her career-making comedy didn’t diminish the audience’s applause.
If anything, each time she blanked, which she confessed with a wry grin or a laugh at herself, she became even more relatable.
And that’s where a good chunk of Tomlin’s appeal surely lies: She seems like one of us — only more interesting, as an audience member described her during a Q-and-A segment, and certainly more witty. That’s thanks in part to her wife, Jane Wagner, who writes material for her.
Saturday at the Dr. Phillips Center, Tomlin was at her best not when playing one of her famed characters from “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” but when she expressed the worries that annoyingly buzz around the edges of our consciousness.
Tomlin, 77, wonderfully expresses our fears, our hopes and embodies the general puzzlement at the world and its quirks that so many of us feel. And like Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip, she can fill the simplest question or statement with existential import on one level — and a hearty and intelligent laugh on another.
“At some point, I realized idealism is unrealistic,” she opined. “These days, no matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
She steered clear of overt political or topical humor — though a question from an audience member led her to coin the phrase “Mar-aLoco” to describe the president’s Florida residence.
Another jab at politicians was more timeless. Lamenting lies she heard from her mother: “She told me the people in Washington wouldn’t be there if they didn’t know what they were doing.” The look on her face said it all as the audience roared.
But mostly, Tomlin stuck to revisiting the characters that made her a comedy legend: Homeless Trudy, precocious child Edith Ann, “semi-non-orgasmic woman” Judith Beasley and obnoxious telephone operator Ernestine.
An old video clip — “We’re the phone company. We don’t care. We don’t have to” — showed why Ernestine holds up. Substitute “cable company” or “Internet provider” for “phone company” and the humor still rings true. We all still fight unfeeling bureaucracy and corporate America.
Even better: A sequence in which Ernestine now works for a health-insurance company. “Not covered, not covered,” Tomlin repeated with barely contained glee. Scoffed Ernestine at one caller: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away. So does being poor.”
Her stumbles sapped some of the zing out the middle portion of her show — “We’ve even thrown the lighting people off,” she said after one pause to collect her thoughts.
But when she recovered, she was back in top form.
“All my life I’ve wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific,” she joked, repeating an old favorite. The Orlando audience seemed fine with Tomlin being exactly who she is. More important, so did Lily.