Shirley MacLaine’s Stage Incarnation

Hey, you out there. Shirley MacLaine wants to talk with you.

“I’m finding I want to break the proscenium more and more,” said the Oscar-winning actress, whose new song-and-dance show, “Out There Tonight,” opens at the Pantages Tuesday. “Maybe it’s a natural evolution of advanced years: feeling the need to communicate, never knowing what I’m going to say, learning to work spontaneously, getting past the fear, the expectation of disaster. There’s a lot of freedom in that.”

And film?

“Film is a much cooler medium,” said MacLaine, who’s currently at work on a new book-- of course about her (“Can you see me writing about anybody else?”). “You know you can take it from the top or fix it in the editing room. On stage, the audience feeds you. It comes in waves of sound--and waves of silence. When they’re really rapt, you can feel the silence. It’s immediacy, it’s in the moment. Every time I go out there, I feel the barriers evaporating a little more.”

Yet when it comes to analyzing her Pied Piper appeal--whether as a performer or proponent of New Age beliefs--MacLaine believes her unabashed public life has created a certain intimacy with audiences. “My life is a literal open book,” she said wryly. “So why shouldn’t it be on stage or in a seminar? I can’t hide. And I don’t know that sharing is even a choice; I think it’s a necessity in life.”

In this show--patterned after her successful outing at the Wilshire Theatre in ‘84--the informal sharing coexists with a very physical workout: a collection of songs (some original, some from her films: “Can-Can,” “Sweet Charity” and “Irma La Douce”) and a “great big” dance tribute to choreographers. “It’s not easy getting this together,” she noted. “I have to get back in shape, get the right exercises, the right moves. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get really old and can’t lift my leg.”

THEATER BUZZ: Buddy, can you spare a penny? The Mark Taper Forum and Doolittle Theatre are rolling in change lately, thanks to two ticket discount programs: the month-old Public Rush (whereby patrons showing up 10 minutes before curtain may pay $10--cash--for remaining seats) and its less structured counterpart, the ongoing “Pay What You Can” plan.

Typical “Pay What You Can” contributions are said to hover around the $7 mark (or the price of a movie), although box-office employees report that fur-clad ladies have been known to proffer small change. And not long ago, one well-heeled couple sprang for a penny . . . for two seats.

TASTY TIDBIT: Actress Maylou Sullivan makes an encore appearance’s at Venice’s Sculpture Gardens restaurant tonight with a reading of three “mini-stories” by Irishman Bernard MacLaverty, followed by a dinner choice of duck breast, shrimps and nopales or eggplant casserole--plus appetizer, sorbet, dessert and coffee. For reservations: (213) 396-5809.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Pierre Corneille’s 17th-Century romance-comedy, “The Illusion,” gets a face lift in Tony Kushner’s new adaptation at Los Angeles Theatre Center. David Schweizer directs.

Cheered The Times’ Sylvie Drake: “This ‘Illusion’ is a fascinating hybrid of fantasy and humor, with the magic remembering that it has feet of clay. It’s not ‘The Wizard of Oz’ exactly, but . . . “

Said Daryl H. Miller in the Daily News: “The show is fresh and invigorating, due to the timelessness of Corneille’s dramatic vision and the timeliness of Kushner’s adaptation. Schweizer’s staging also adds zest, as do the inventive performances.”

Daily Variety’s Kathleen O’Steen found it “lives up to a good deal of the play’s comical potential while also substantially investigating the darker realms, thanks in good part to Schweizer’s vision. Add to that Douglas D. Smith’s wondrous settings.”

From the Orange County Register’s Thomas O’Connor “Schweizer’s engaging staging plays magic tricks with our perceptions and with Corneille’s cautionary comedy about love’s illusion. Yet it never toys or cloys . . . Almost everything suggests a surprisingly happy marriage of classic French style to hip ‘90s sensibilities.”