The audience heard the truth from Edith Ann, got beauty tips from Madame Lupe, and found out from Ernestine just how much the phone company cares, when humor icon Lily Tomlin visited Shippensburg on Saturday, March 29.

Tomlin brought those cast members with her, and more, when her “Classic Lily Tomlin” national tour stopped at the H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center.

Tomlin appeared during the show wearing all black-— a loose blouse and pair of comfortable wide-legged pants; a necessary outfit for the physically demanding movements that parts of her performance require.

Her stage was minimalistic. She had a chair, a side table with a couple of water bottles on it and some steps that can serve as a stage, a porch, a chair, a sofa, or a bed, depending on the concept of the moment.

All of that is backed by a heavy black curtain that can part to reveal a movie screen.
Tomlin had experimented with multimedia performances all the way back in the 1970s, and is revisiting the concept now that technology is making it even easier.

She used the screen and a computer to revisit some past moments of her characters, her past performances and of her personal history.

The rest of her performance alternated between delivering rapid-fire one-liners or quick intellectual conundrums while pacing nervously across the stage, and lounging on the chair or steps while interacting with the crowd.

Tomlin also included a number of brief setions of her past routines, and made observations on current events.

It was all interspersed with humorous tales and stories of personal history that paint a picture of significant moments in her career and how they relate to pivotal periods in the television and movie industries.

Tomlin ended her performance with a question and answer session. Audience members had a chance to write down questions for her on three by five cards, and she spent about 15 minutes reading the questions to the audience and then answering them.

Some past and some future roles as well as others worked as a takeoff point for more stories or some good-natured teasing of the person who wrote the question.
Tennis has a grand slam; golf does too. For a performer, the grand slam is the EGOT — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.

So far, Tomlin has a GET — a Grammy, seven Emmys and two Tonys — and was nominated for the Oscar for Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville.

She also won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, a CableAce award, two Peabodys and a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame with her partner and wife, Jane Wagner.

In the ’60s he appeared on the Garry Moore Show, one of the earliest variety shows on television. Other famous names from the show include Don Adams, Johnathan Winters and Carol Burnett.
She spent several years on Rowen and Martin’s Laugh-In, where she created the roles of telephone operator Ernestine (updated for her current tour from the phone company to healthcare) and six-year-old Edith Ann, with her trade-mark line, “And that’s the truth.”

Tomlin starred in “And the Band Played On,” an HBO special about the AIDS epidemic. She also had roles on “West Wing,” “NCIS,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Homicide,” “Damages,” “Will and Grace,” “Murphy Brown” and “The X-Files.”

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