Lily Tomlin wins the job with character references

Early into her act at CSUN's Valley Performing Arts Center--shortly after the video clip of several of her characters but well before the show took off Friday night--Lily Tomlin says actors worry about playing to an empty house. "I worry about playing to a full house but leaving them empty," she confesses.

Fat chance. Tomlin has made a career of respecting the intelligence of her audience and is much appreciated for it.

Her unique blend of comic artistry offers maximum nutrition  for the heart and the brain. Her act has been carefully honed to include pithy observations on the human condition, relatable stories from her childhood and, especially, a delightful smorgasbord of all those amazing characters she inhabits, sometimes several of them simultaneously.

Tomlin, 74, burst into the national consciousness when she joined the merry cast of NBC's Laugh-In as the show began its third season in 1970. That's when she became irrevocably linked to Ernestine, the pugnacious phone operator, and Edith Ann, the precocious six-year-old.

To the delight of those in the seemingly sold out Great Hall, both characters made appearances. Edith Ann was as bright and outspoken as ever. Ernestine, undoubtedly a victim of the enormous changes in telecommunications, has found a new use for her haughty attitude. Now she's  a claims administrator for a medical insurance company. ("Your health is our business, not our concern.")

Other familiar Tomlin characters revisited Friday night included housewife Judith Beasley, lounge singer Tommy Velour, rhythm and blues artist Pervis Hawkins and Madame Lupe ("the world's oldest living beauty expert"), all of them presented on video clips.

To some extent, Tomlin is a victim of her own success. A few of her lines, such as "I always wanted to be someone but I should have been more specific," have been so widely quoted over the years that they have lost some of their punch. Tomlin still observes that vegetable oil comes from vegetables, then wonders where baby oil comes from, but fans can see that one coming from a distance, as well.

There's no need to abandon the intellectual jests to Steven Wright but it's probably time to update and freshen  more of these observations.

Meanwhile, Tomlin still reigns supreme when it comes to recalling childhood reminiscences about home and school  life in her working class Detroit suburb. Whether it's the humiliation of mispronouncing the word "island" or a Hollywood-style fixation on a teacher, her stories seem as poignant today as when they  first occurred decades earlier.

Most entertainers have to contend with the ravages of time; Tomlin seems to have escaped it almost entirely. Her remarkable agility and movement on stage suggest she has immunized herself from any  forces of aging. Her athleticism is not only remarkable in and of itself but also for what it adds to the delivery of her material.

Following the 90-minute set, Tomlin answered questions submitted in advance by audience members. No one asked how she accounts for her great success on TV, stage and film. Perhaps performances like the one Friday night make the answer all too obvious.