UNIVERSAL AMPHITHEATRE SHOW : A CRYSTAL CLEAR VIEW OF A COMEDIAN ON HIS OWN

Billy Crystal’s appearance at Universal Amphitheatre marked the third time he’s been on the amphitheater stage in the last few months. The first was with Robin Williams, who out-hustled him as co-host of “Comic Relief”; the second was when Williams, in his concert, suckered Crystal into getting onstage again for a curtain call--which no one should ever do: It’s like guilelessly draping one’s arm over a band saw.

The third time, in a weekend stint that ended Monday night, turned out to be the charm. Crystal, who has had several successes in television, notably with “Soap” and “Saturday Night Live,” and has been well received (along with Gregory Hines) in the otherwise critically disparaged summer movie “Running Scared,” is one of those performers who’s genuinely at his best when on his own. He doesn’t give the impression of having been put out on a gangplank at the sword point of commercial demand as has, say, the gifted Eddie Murphy.

The concert stage is his true metier. On it, he creates his space and shapes his time. He seems genuinely at ease playing to an audience rather than playing at it. It helps too that in addition to jokes and observations, he’s a sharp impersonator and a skilled mime. Two of the highlights of his show, which was being taped by HBO for a special called “Don’t Get Me Started,” include Howard Cosell interviewing a number of boxers, such as Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns (he does all their voices and mannerisms superbly), and a ‘50s 8-millimeter home film (silent) of a New York suburban host at a barbecue who becomes increasingly irate at everyone around him (including the cameraman).

A lot of people fill up Crystal’s act. They include a prodigiously flatulent grandfather, a kvetching aunt, Sylvester Stallone--whose speech resembles a shaped belch--the unctuous Sammy Davis Jr., Edward G. Robinson miscast in “The Ten Commandments,” Yul Brynner (who would ever think of doing Yul Brynner?), midget wrestlers, Ricky, a Long Islander whom time has left behind and who, at his 20th high school reunion, gets to dance with his one-time dream, Rosie Testerado.

And, of course, the “Djoo look mahvelous” Hernando (Crystal finally broke the pretense by accidentally calling him Fernando), whom Crystal had the good sense not to overplay, using him instead as a calling card before getting under way.

His act right now is a thoughtful balance of some of his old stuff, and some new--and one or two things that look to be borrowed from the club circuit; the device of having an audience finish one’s sentences, for example, is owned and still best operated by Kevin Neeland.

Crystal shares with Richard Pryor something of the ability to personify objects that aren’t altogether human (as with his tyrannical adolescent genitalia, for example), and with Lily Tomlin the skill at whipping up personal experience and observation into scenarios heightened with comic touches. What has distinguished Crystal to this observer, aside from his open, boyish appeal and his New York bluntness is the extraordinary affection and sympathy he lends to one or two of his people.

At the conclusion of his act, he talked about his family in the jazz record business. He sang a soulful Billie Holiday lick that sounded eerily like the real thing, before taking us downtown to the dressing room of a dingy New York club to meet up again with the 75-year-old black horn player Pops, who had known Crystal only as a young boy, when all the musicians called the kid “Face.”

With the lights low, except for a dim spot, and Mark Shaiman noodling saloon piano off left, Crystal’s enactment of the old trouper was so rendingly exact that you didn’t see Crystal anymore. You saw a composite of Lester Young, Ben Webster, any number of aging black jazz greats who blew their hearts out in neglect, full of courage, innate dignity and unvanquishable good humor.

“Never stop happenin’,” the old man tells Face. “Keep it simple. Dinner’s always best when you don’t eat too much.” And then it’s goodby--he’s gotta do the gig now. Face, don’t wait 15 years to come back again.

A lesser artist would have sentimentally played up the old man’s unmistakable sorrows (he hocks his horn to buy a set of teeth, but then he has to hock his teeth to get the horn back for a gig). By giving us a few details and playing away from Pop’s lonely life, we feel its poignant weight more.

Such moments make one wonder about Crystal, and why he hasn’t taken his exceptional gifts further. The comedian’s first mandate is to amuse, which Crystal does handsomely. But the great comedian offers us a series of impressions that combine to touch us at some deeper level of experience and give us an anchor-hard feeling about what it is to be alive, amid endless contradictions.

Crystal is like one of those superb athletes who has great form but no blood in his eye when the game goes into sudden death. He has it all in place, and no one can fail to like him or take pleasure in what he does. He can move us and make us laugh. But he doesn’t make us think.

Crystal will always be a commercial success. You can see him in years to come settling in on the dais at a Friars’ roast, one of the boys. The mix of his prodigious gifts and his curious reluctance raises the question you’d never consider after seeing someone like Jack Carter or Tom Dreesen: What does it take to ripen entertainment into art without losing the comic spirit? Crystal leaves us pondering this question.