Lily Tomlin is still searching for signs of intelligent life, and the quest will take her on a 29-city tour beginning Sept. 30.
Thirteen years after winning a Best Actress Tony Award for her star turn playing multiple characters in Jane Wagner's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Tomlin is returning to the material. Writer-director Wagner is approaching with a fresh eye in anticipation of the new century, according to a spokesperson.
The tour begins Sept. 30 in Austin, TX.
The script, loaded with incisive seriocomic observations about post 1960s cultural attitudes, expectations and consequences, helped earn Tomlin a Tony (and her longtime collaborator not even a nomination), and the show went on a successful national tour to 1990-91. Tomlin played a punker teen, a wise bag lady, hookers, a fitness freak, a husband, a lesbian editor, and more.
One of the more celebrated lines of the play had a character named Lynn, struggling to be a superwoman, observing, "If I had known what it would be like to have it all, I might have settled for less." A spokesperson for the show said it was not clear what sort of future this revisit to the script might have, and had no word about an intent to continue to tour in 2000 or whether or not it might return to New York City for sitdown production. The tour is considered an exploratory reapproach to see how the material plays more than a decade after it premiered. The physical production will be leaner than on Broadway, with no set, but the show is not a trimmed version.
The tour is a Delsner Slater production, produced by Tomlin.
Tomlin is a Detroit native who rose to fame on the TV program, "Laugh-In," and starred in the film "Nashville" and, recently, "Tea With Mussolini." Her previous Broadway show, Appearing Nitely, in 1977, earned her a Special Tony Award.
The Search will play the following dates:
Sept. 30: Austin, TX
Oct. 2: Melbourne, FL
Oct. 5: Jacksonville, FL
Oct. 9: Miami, FL
Oct. 11: Orlando, FL
Oct. 14: West Palm Beach, FL
Oct. 15: Naples, FL
Oct. 16: Tampa, FL
Oct. 21: Myrtle Beach, SC
Oct. 22-24: Detroit, MI
Oct. 28: Cincinnati
Oct. 30: Atlanta
Nov. 3-4: Toronto
Nov. 6-7: Denver
Nov. 9: Rochester, NY
Nov. 10: Syracuse, Ny
Nov. 12: Foxwoods, CT
Nov. 14: Brookville, NY
Nov. 16: Northhampton, MA
Nov. 17: Concord, NH
Nov. 18: New Brunswick, NJ
Nov. 20: Easton, PA
Nov. 21: Wallingford, CT
Nov. 23: Stamford, CT
Nov. 26-27: Cleveland
Nov. 29: Concord, NH
Nov. 30: Burlington, VT
Dec. 3-4: Costa Mesa, CA
Dec. 5: San Diego
Dec. 9-10: Tempe, AZ
-- By Kenneth Jones
