Lily Tomlin at the Tent
“I didn’t always want to be a gifted actress,” Lily Tomlin confessed midway through her show Thursday night (July 25) at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. “I wanted to be a waitress. When I lost a tooth, my father left a quarter under a plate.”
She left her childhood home in Detroit to go to New York to become a waitress. “I knew it was going to be tough. All I could get was work on Broadway. It was my third year on ‘Laugh In’ when I gave up all hope of becoming a waitress. I knew I was going to have settle for being a star.”
That she is. She’s gained acclaim on TV (from “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In” to “Malibu Country,” winning five Emmys along the way), in the movies (“Nashville,” “Nine to Five” and “I Heart Huckabees”), on stage (the Tony-winning one-woman show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”) and on recordings (the Grammy-winning comedy album “This Is a Recording”).
On stage, Tomlin comes across as relaxed and friendly, without the amped-up agitation of so many comics. Her wry humor is delivered through a mix of nostalgic stories, snappy stand-up lines and bits by classic characters.
Archival videos on three big screens introduced some of those characters, including Ernestine the tart-tongued telephone operator and beauty-products spokeswoman Judy Beasley. Each of them was pulled into contemporary times. Edith Ann, an eternal 6-year-old, complained about an older sister who spent all her time with her iPod, iPad and iPhone, while Beasley pitched a product designed to improve the sex lives of suburban housewives.
One of the highlights was the segment where Tomlin transformed into Ernestine, who now works taking phone calls for a health-insurance company. Some of her responses to a caller: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away. So does being poor. … Being blind is a pre-existing condition. You should have read the fine print. … Of course we don’t cover acupuncture. I was just needling you. … Remember, your health is our business, not our concern.”
Tomin delivered two sets of about an hour each, including a post-show question-and-answer section. Throughout she veered barely into PG territory only a few times, and the closest she came to using a dirty word was when she described how clean-cut life was in the Detroit of her childhood. “If someone painted that word on an overpass, by the next morning some adult would have changed it to Buick.”
Tomlin tread lightly into politics. Mentioning the nearby nuclear power plant, she said, “Many Cape Codders are protesting Pilgrim. Many Native Americans are still protesting the Pilgrims.” As for same-sex marriage, “If all of us homosexuals started imitating heterosexuals, it could be a slippery slope. What’s next? Monster truck rallies?”
If you were looking for signs of intelligent life Thursday night, there was plenty of evidence on stage at the Melody Tent.