Comedy Queen Reigns on Road

Would you do the Tarzan yell? What’s the deal with tugging your ear? Carol Burnett can bank on the same requests and queries each time she does her one-woman conversation with her audience.

But the carrot-top comedian with the big lungs and trademark lobe-yank, who brings her live chat to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, says the unexpected always crops up.

Burnett, 66, opens the laugh-filled dialogue with clips of audience Q-and-A’s from “The Carol Burnett Show,” which aired from 1967 to 1979 to become the longest-running musical comedy variety series in TV history. In a recent telephone interview from her Los Angeles home, she said she has toured with the live no-frills production for the past decade, between TV and theatrical appearances.

“Call me Carol,” the down-to-earth celeb said at the start of the interview, which covered a variety of topics.

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Question: So, your show begins with clips?

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Answer: Yes, about seven minutes of some of the silliest, funniest question-and-answer stuff we did, and it helps explain what the evening is about: conversation. Then I come out, and it’s freewheeling and flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants time.

Q: Why did you choose this format?

A: It’s just fun, and it’s very simple. I didn’t have to write an act and I don’t have to carry musicians around or wear a lot of costumes. You bring your dress, hang it on a nail, put it on, and you go.

Q: Are there surprises from the audience each night?

A: Yes, there are some questions that I get constantly. People ask about [“The Carol Burnett Show co-stars] Harvey [Korman] and Tim [Conway] and, you know, about the show and so forth. And most all the time they ask for the Tarzan yell, but then you just never know what’s going to happen.

Q: Like?

A: Well, (laughing), one time, somewhere back East, a young man raised his hand and said he’s turning 25, that it was his birthday, and would I give him a birthday kiss. So he came up, I gave him a peck on the cheek, and we all sang “Happy Birthday.”

Then, after a few more questions, some man raises his hand--a very nice-looking man in a suit and tie--who stands up and says “I’m not 25, it’s my 40th birthday.” And he said “I really find you very funny and I find you very sexy,” so I said, “Get up here!”

Now, the audience is laughing, and I say, “Soooo, you’re 40, what’s your name?” He says, “Bob.” So I give him a little peck, and he starts to leave, and for some reason, I grabbed his sleeve and said, “Come back here!” And I said, “So, have you ever thought about an older woman?” I was having some fun with him. But he got sort of embarrassed, and he said, “Well, gosh, I don’t know.” So I said, “Well tell me, Bob, are you involved?” And he blushed and looked down, and said, “Well, sort of.”

Well I wouldn’t let up on him. I said, “Sort of?! Come on Bob, ‘fess up.” So he said, “I’m a priest.” And I said, “Father, forgive me for I have sinned.” Now, you know, you couldn’t write that!

Q: Do you still get nervous before performing?

A: Oh, sure, because you never know. You wonder, is the audience just going to sit there and not ask anything? It’d just be a staring contest, and we’d all go home. But--knock on wood--that’s never happened. No, people are very nice and inquisitive and they get as many laughs as I do, and I love it when that happens.”

Q: Has anyone ever asked a question you won’t answer?

A: No, if anybody did--and I don’t even know what that would be--I’d turn it right back and ask them the same thing.

Q: What else are you up to these days? Are you still doing “Mad About You?” (Burnett has done cameos as Helen Hunt’s mother on the NBC series.)

A: Yes, I recently did another which will be on before this season’s final episode. And I’m going back to Broadway in the fall with a Stephen Sondheim show I did out here last year at the Mark Taper Forum [a revue titled “Putting It Together,” which also will star Orange County-reared Susan Egan].

Q: What do you think of stand-up comics today?

A: There are certain things that are timelessly funny, and some that are timely funny, and I think what’s going on now is timely funny. I don’t know how it will hold up in the long run. What holds up is comedy that isn’t hitting on the contemporary stuff, that’s not written about a specific time so much. You look at some of the silent movies and see the shtick they did, the human-nature things, the foibles of mankind, or you see Lucy [Lucille Ball] doing her stuff, or Sid Caesar, or some of what we did on our show, and you still laugh.

Q: What about the liberal use of profanity or a certain crudeness used by many of today’s comedians?

A: To me that’s not funny, it’s not clever; it’s an easy way to get a laugh. I’m not a prude, and I don’t mind the crudeness if it’s coming out of a character. Like there was nobody more raw, if not crude, than Richard Pryor, but he had this take on it, this funny angle, the attitude and so forth, and he could not have done what he did without saying those words because they colored the entire piece. And I’ve seen Whoopi [Goldberg] do characters where she gets very blue, but that’s the character.

Q: Do you tug your ear in the show?

A: Sure.

Q: I bet that’s a question you get a lot: How did that signature move originate?

A: When I was going to be on TV for the first time, I called my grandmother to tell her, and she said, ‘Oh, say hello to me.’ And I said, “I can’t say ‘Hello, Nanny’ on TV.” So we cooked up this plan that I would pull my left ear as a signal to her. I initially did it very cleverly, like in a scene, as if it were just a habit somebody would have, then later on I’d very obviously do it, while taking bows or something.”

Q: Anything else you’d like to add?

A: I’d just tell people coming to the show to please raise their hands!

* “Laughter and Reflection with Carol Burnett--A Conversation with Carol Where the Audience Asks the Questions” will be staged Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. $37-$47. (800) 300-4345.