Tomlin’s ‘Life’ Returns to L.A. for Swan Song : Theater: Actress says her one-woman play will finish in the city where it started.

“The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” will end in Los Angeles.

Lily Tomlin will return her one-woman epic to her home town next month, playing the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills April 14-29 (on a Thursday-Sunday schedule), with previews beginning April 11. The engagement will precede a three-week filming of the show, at a yet-to-be-determined Los Angeles sound stage. Tomlin expects it to be her final “Search.”

The one-woman play, written by Jane Wagner, won five Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards during a 203-performance run at the Doolittle Theatre in 1986-87. With a gross of $5.2 million, it ranked 10th on Variety’s list of Los Angeles’ highest-grossing shows of the ‘80s--the only non-musical to make the top 10.

Tomlin and Wagner developed the play in a small storefront on Heliotrope Drive in Los Angeles and at the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Center Stage in San Diego, before going on to nationwide success, including a Broadway production in 1985-86.

Although no return engagement of the show is scheduled for San Diego, said Tomlin, “I should go back and do some benefits for them (the Old Globe). Jack O’Brien (Old Globe artistic director) has always been so terrific.”

Speaking by phone from Louisville, the last stop on the “Search” tour before the Wilshire, Tomlin said the show “won’t be radically different” than it was at the Doolittle. “Just more refined, I suppose. That’s part of why I love the theater--its infinite perfectibility.

“I’m still trying to get it right.”

KEEP KICKING: “A Chorus Line” may close on Broadway in April, but it’s scheduled to open in Hollywood in May.

Two “Chorus Line” alumni, Steve Bellin and Danny Taylor, will direct this production, scheduled to kick off at Las Palmas Theatre on May 21--the 15th anniversary of the musical’s off-Broadway premiere.

Bellin played Zach, the director and interrogator in “A Chorus Line,” on international and national tours in 1977-79 and on Broadway for six months in 1979. Taylor was dance captain of the show’s first national company, at the Shubert in Century City, and played the roles of Mike, Al and Larry in other productions.

The pair met when Taylor, directing “A Chorus Line” at Grand Dinner Theatre in Anaheim in 1985, hired Bellin to play Zach.

They began their effort to mount the show at Las Palmas in 1988, finally obtaining financing from a venture capital group, which stipulated the hiring of two experienced producers. So Bellin and Taylor brought in William R. Greenblatt of Symphony Pictures, Inc., and former Pasadena Playhouse co-producing director Stephen Rothman.

The producers plan to focus on the tourist trade, said Bellin and Rothman. And they’re trying to emulate the feel of the original off-Broadway production, hoping that those who saw the show in larger theaters will want to see it in a more intimate house. The Las Palmas seats 392.

Bellin said the initial investment will last three weeks, but he hopes the show will run much longer.

‘PHANTOM’ NEWS: Michael Crawford resumed playing “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Ahmanson Tuesday after missing seven performances because of flu.

Reflecting on his first night in the part last week, understudy Norman Large acknowledged making “some errors, but nothing that disturbed what I wanted to do with the part”--which was “to fill what’s written in the script without copying (Crawford).” Yet “it’s hard to not do what he does,” he added. Large said the understudies rehearse “about once every two weeks,” but the last such rehearsal was three weeks before Crawford’s illness.

A few moments in the score are pre-recorded. Large had recorded those bits--brief phrases and laughs, heard primarily when the Phantom is offstage--long before he was actually called on stage.

Meanwhile, the casts of “Phantom” and “Starlight Express” will play softball at Pan-Pacific Park Friday at 10 a.m. The “Starlight” company issued the challenge via fax: “Our diesel, steam and electric engines are ready for a softball game--come out from behind that mask and just try and beat steam!”

To which the “Phantom” company faxed back: “The Phantom commands that we accept your challenge! Be warned, greaseball, we eagerly look forward to kicking your caboose!”

CHANGE OF ALLEYS: Sherman Oaks’ only Equity-sanctioned theater, Actors Alley, is planning to move into North Hollywood’s Main Stage Theater, 12135 Riverside Drive, by the end of May. The lease on the company’s present quarters, on Van Nuys Blvd., is being taken over by neighboring Fab’s restaurant.

The new premises have a roomier lobby and 30 more seats than the group’s current 67-seat house, but not as much office space. Founded in 1971, Actors Alley moved to its present location in 1975.

“Big Fish, Little Fish” and “Hello, I Must Be Going” will continue at the old space through April, and the improvisational Alley Oops group will perform there through most of May. Artistic director Jeremiah Morris hopes to mount his first show at the new space by July.