Coming of Age

Eartha Kitt is the original spice girl, a singer-actress who knew her way around the material world long before Madonna was born. If gold-digging and male manipulation were a competitive sport, Kitt--or at least her stage persona--would be the game’s Michael Jordan.

As expected, Kitt played her seductive side to the max Thursday at Founders Hall in the Orange County Performing Arts Center as she opened a three-night stand. But another, more considered side of the musical seductress was evident as well, a side that found her moving beyond her femme-fatale identity to reflect on life from the vantage of her 70 years.

Of course, her early work with Orson Welles, her political outspokenness during the ‘60s and the tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. she recorded in 1987 showed an intelligence and social commitment belying the sex-kitten image.

Her dynamic performances Thursday of “Here’s to Life,” “It Was a Very Good Year” and her own “All by Myself” indicated Kitt can, at times, put vamping aside and examine her life in front of an audience.

Maybe it’s the encroaching years. Kitt, who announced last year that she would turn 68 in 1997, told the sold-out Founders Hall audience that according to a newly discovered birth certificate, she’ll turn 71 in January. It would seem that the years are catching up with her faster than they do for the rest of us.

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Yet there was no indication of that in her stage presence. Kitt shook, shimmied and bent backward with a flexibility the envy of those half her age. Her steamy voice--at times recalling Dinah Washington, at others Edith Piaf--has not changed much in the past several years. She uses it with theatrical certainty, cooing here, growling there, then bursting forth with loud, vibrato-less clarity for emphasis.

Even her between-tune banter, as engaging as her singing, was sprinkled with nostalgia as she talked about her teenage years touring with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe and the harrowing circumstances that led to her writing “All by Myself” and offered other snapshots of her sometimes difficult life.

Still, the majority of the evening was devoted to what Kitt does best: taunt men with her sexuality. She delivered her signature number “I Want to Be Evil” with equal parts innocence and naughtiness. She teased men in the audience, fixing them with icy stares and coaxing them with body heat to give her a view of their billfolds. She tormented one oblivious fellow first in French and then in Spanish.

But as she teased, Kitt seemed to find it harder than in years past to stay in character, often turning her evil eye away from the audience to break into laughter. At the end of the performance, she visited every table she had taunted, shaking hands with her victims and their dates.

Backed by pianist-musical director Daryl Waters, Mel Torme bassist John Leitham and drummer Denny Seidwell, Kitt performed with smart--though sometimes rushed--phrasing and a practiced delivery as she spoke and sang her way through material.

Her readings of “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “How Insensitive” and “Don’t Explain,” which she dedicated to Billie Holiday, put weight on the lyric. Kitt gave each line time for its meaning to sink in.

No doubt Kitt will rely on her femme-fatale image until she retires. But who says even a bad girl can’t get a little introspective now and again?

* Eartha Kitt appears tonight at Founders Hall, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. $40. (714) 556-2787.