COMEDY REVIEW : Billy Connolly in Fine Fettle

There are times when you try to tell a story of something that once happened to you, maybe years ago, and the recollection is still so fresh and funny that your insides seize with involuntary spasms and your eyes tear up. But you’re so lost in the rapids of laughter that you’re beyond self-consciousness, and the mood sweeps over your listener too.

That’s what a Billy Connolly concert is like when he’s cooking, as he was Thursday night at the Henry Fonda Theater. Connolly, who was once a welder and then a folk singer, first made a stir here in the mid-’80s when he arrived from his native Scotland.

It looked as though Connolly would catch on big, but then he fell into the Lost in America category. His stand-up routines imploded into the generic, patronizing vulgarity of that relentless lineup of whining sexual plaintiffs who stood with a mike in front of a tired curtain. A couple of TV sitcoms shrank him into a self-parody of a “Billy” with terminal cutes.

The stage is Connolly’s natural habitat, and he was in terrific form Thursday as he played to a packed house. Connolly is basically a hustling storyteller, who can’t wait to buttonhole you with his latest elaborate tale broken down into labyrinthine anecdotes. The press, the Royal Family, television, the ontology of flatulence before and after marriage, his adventures on the road, the ritual of a drunk trying to appear sober, and winter Olympians--Connolly lavishes a Dickensian richness on all.

He played for 2 1/2 hours without letup in spirit, imagery and comic invention. He is lost no more.