Lily’s lineup

H ere’s who you’ll see on the stage of the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox on Thursday:

• Ernestine, the snorting, gum-popping corporate functionary.

• Edith Ann, the bratty 6-year-old.

• Mrs. Beasley, the tasteful homemaker.

You might even catch glimpses of Rick, the lady’s man; Madame Lupe, the world’s oldest living beauty expert; Trudy, the delusional genius, and maybe five or six others.

Not a bad lineup, considering this is a one-woman show, billed as “An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin.”

“No, there won’t be an opening act,” said Tomlin, laughing, by phone from her home in L.A. “I don’t know how people even have opening acts. I don’t have enough time to do what I want as it is.”

Despite that term “classic” in the title, don’t expect all of these Tomlin characters to be frozen in time from 1969, when some of them debuted on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” Take Ernestine, for instance, who used to work for the giant, monopolistic phone company.

Sometime during the era of phone deregulation, Ernestine apparently decided that she did not have sufficient power at the phone company to bully her customers.

“Ernestine, lately, has been working at a big insurance company,” said Tomlin.

Why?

“So she can deny healthcare for everyone,” said Tomlin. “She had to find some place where she could really torture someone.”

On Thursday, Tomlin will be doing what is essentially her comedy act, but she has never, even in her early days at Wayne State University and New York coffeehouses, done a regular standup act in which she stands there and tells jokes.

“I’ve always done characters,” she said. “It’s my version of standup.”

Tomlin can not only play a lot of characters, but she has also played an uncommon variety of professional roles throughout her career. There is also Tomlin the movie actress, Tomlin the Broadway performer, Tomlin the writer and Tomlin the producer.

The breadth of her talent can best be illustrated through her many awards:

• Two Tony Awards, one for Best Actress for her show, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” and the other for Best Theatrical Achievement for her one-woman Broadway show, “Appearing Nitely.”

• A Grammy for her comedy album, “This Is a Recording.”

• Several Emmy Awards, for accomplishments ranging from acting to writing to producing.

• A CableACE Award for the Showtime version of “The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”

• Four American Comedy Awards.

• Two Peabody Awards, one for the TV special, “Edith Ann’s Christmas,” the other for narrating and executive producing HBO’s “The Celluloid Closet.”

Just about the only thing she hasn’t won is an Oscar – although she was nominated for one in her first role out of the box.

“ ‘Nashville’ was my first movie, and that was Bob Altman,” said Tomlin. “It was a big thing for me because I played a quite serious, straight role and I was very fresh off ‘Laugh-In.’ I played Linnea, the gospel singer married to Ned Beatty and I sang in a black choir. Nobody would put me in a movie except someone like Altman.”

She was beaten out for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year by Lee Grant in “Shampoo.”

Then came 1977’s “The Late Show,” an off-beat murder mystery with Art Carney. It was written and directed by Robert Benton, who went on to make “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Places in the Heart.” She played Margo Sperling, a flaky drug courier who hires the Carney character to find her kidnapped cat.

“I won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival,” she said. “Which I thought was great, not knowing there was a gold one.”

She was unable to accept her award in person. In fact, she was unable to accept it at all.

“I kept saying to Bob (Robert Benton, the director), ‘Did they ever send that Silver Bear?’ ” said Tomlin. “Forget it. I never laid eyes on it.”

Then came three movies which helped define American comedy in the 1980s: “Nine to Five,” with Dolly Parton, “All of Me” with Steve Martin and “Big Business” with Bette Midler.

There are a few less-than-spectacular titles on her resume as well – “Moment by Moment” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” – but overall Tomlin considers herself lucky to have been in so many quality movies with great directors.

In 2006, she appeared in Altman’s final movie, “A Prairie Home Companion,” as one of the singing Johnson sisters, with Meryl Streep.

“It was divine, really,” she said. “Even though Bob (Altman) was sick, you’d never know he was sick. He was getting chemo every day … (but) he was totally unflappable and easy.”

Lately, she has been busy with nonmovie projects, including “12 Miles of Bad Road,” an HBO series that has been shelved, and a new Web site called The Women on the Web, www.wowowow.com, in which she and other prominent women (including Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Candice Bergen and Judith Martin) engage in blogs and discussions.

Meanwhile, Tomlin would love to develop a new one-woman show to take back to Broadway, or possibly a new TV series.

“I’m trying to develop something for Edith Ann,” she said. “I’d love for Edith Ann to have a series.”

Pending that, you’ll just have to catch Edith Ann on stage at the Fox – assuming that Edith Ann can be talked into sharing the stage with Lily Tomlin.