THEATRE PREVIEW:

“QUIPS, CLIPS & CONVERSATION” at Civic Theatre

Published in San Diego Union-Tribune September, 1994

For eleven years (1978-1989), Americans invited Carol Burnett into their living rooms, and watched as other folks got to ask her all kinds of questions on "The Carol Burnett Show." If you've been harboring one searing, incisive, drop-dead question all these years, and regretting your lost opportunities, now's your chance. Ms. Burnett will be in San Diego for one night only (her sole California appearance) in "An Evening of Clips, Quips & Conversation," which will be primarily quips and conversation, though she will show seven-minutes of "some of the silliest, most fun questions and answers from the show." Burnett will spend most of her evening ad-libbing responses to audience queries.

"I hope San Diegans have some questions to ask," she quipped by phone from her home in L.A., "or it'll be a very short evening. I have no set lecture or speeches. But I'm not out there working alone. I have the audience. They're my team.... Sometimes (she's done this show a dozen times before), it just lays there like a lump. Sometimes I'm totally stumped. Like the time we were on Stage 33 at CBS and one woman asked me 'Whaddaya clean the floor with?' I got hysterical.

"People can ask me about the show, about my kids, about Harvey (Korman) or Tim (Conway) or Vicki (Lawrence, all her sidekicks on "the show"), or about my daughter's wedding (coming up in October) or who I have a crush on now. I'm pretty much an open book."

She sounds just like you'd expect: warm, energetic, like you've known her for years. "I'm never afraid to open up and say something first; I don't like being talked about."

But people have been talking about this funny lady for years, since she made her TV debut on "The Gary Moore Show" in the late fifties. Her own show was the longest-running musical comedy variety program in television history. She's been an inspiration for hundreds of musical and comic talents (her idols were Lucille Ball and Sid Caesar); she was one of the first inductees into the Comedy Hall of Fame. She moved easily from her roots onstage to TV, film (and soon, radio), winning innumerable awards, while maintaining the reputation of a kind, caring and supportive star. Her 1986 memoir ("One More Time") was a non-fiction best-seller. She is an active board member of the Hereditary Disease Foundation and a staunch AIDS-organization advocate.

At 61, she's far from slowing down. "I'm more crazed even than usual," she says, laughing. "This is the busiest time of my life." She just finished editing a live-audience variety-comedy special for CBS -- "Men, Movies and Carol" -- with Tony Bennett and other musical males, to air October 21 ("I haven't had that much fun since the old show"). When we spoke, she was stamping the invitations to her daughter's wedding, to be held on the CBS stage where Burnett did her original show ("My kids were practically potty-trained there").

At the same time, she's overseeing the building of a sprawling new home in Santa Fe. Though she hates travel ("I look forward to when they can just 'Beam me up'"), she will maintain an apartment in L.A. and a toehold in New York ("I'd love to do theater again, but in a limited way. In London. And off-off-off-off Broadway").

"It's all about the F-word." (Carol Burnett said that?) "Which is Fun." (Whew)... So, twice divorced, who does she have a crush on, anyway? "That's a good question for someone to ask me. There are so many; I'll try to alphabetize the list."

DATEBOOK

"AN EVENING CLIPS, QUIPS AND CONVERSATION"

Carol Burnett makes her only California appearance on Saturday, October 1, at 8 p.m. Civic Theatre. $15-35; 236-6510, 287-TIXS.

PAT LAUNER is a freelance writer and the theater critic for KPBS-FM.

©1994 Patté Productions Inc.