A Feisty Show-Biz Life

Remember the old joke about charismatic performers being able to read a phone book onstage and get away with it? Bea Arthur passes a similar test with flying colors, reciting a recipe for leg of lamb in the opening to “... And Then There’s Bea,” her one-woman show making a whistle-stop on its pre-Broadway tour at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

The feisty veteran Arthur is an original, an increasing rarity in a show-business environment shaped more by market demographics than strong personalities. Wielding her signature husky contralto and earthy humor to cut through pretension, she proves she can captivate an audience in a mostly full 1,800-seat theater with the steps of lamb marinade as easily as with the anthology of songs and stories she’s been “storing up over the years.”

Accompanied on the piano by close friend and composer Billy Goldenberg (who co-created this show), Arthur draws on a rich and varied career that spans six decades of work on the stage, screen and, of course, television, reminiscing fondly on the turning points, good and bad. Predictably, her stints on the long-running “Maude” and “The Golden Girls” figure prominently. More surprisingly, she confides her warmest memories are of her appearance as Lucy Brown in Marc Blitzstein’s Broadway adaptation of “The Threepenny Opera”--not only because of her admiration for Bertolt Brecht’s plunge into the decadence of the 1930s, but for the opportunity to work with Lotte Lenya. Arthur’s rendition of “Threepenny’s” “Pirate Jenny” is one of the show’s musical high points, along with affecting renditions of Kurt Weill’s “It Never Was You,” Jerry Herman’s “Bosom Buddies” and Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” Absent by design is a rendition of the too-obvious Stephen Sondheim show-biz-survivor anthem, “I’m Still Here,” although Goldenberg’s sly musical snippet of it during the curtain call sets up the show’s best sight gag.

Other amusing anecdotes about prominent co-stars and collaborators include Tallulah Bankhead’s breezy good humor about gossip romantically linking her to a gay member of a “Ziegfeld Follies” revival, and Arthur’s illusion-bursting realization while doing the original “Mame” on Broadway that beneath star Angela Lansbury’s polished patrician veneer, Bea’s longtime friend has “a mouth like a longshoreman,” with a fondness for lowbrow, raunchy humor. Not to be outdone, Arthur relates a few earthy (and unprintable) jokes of her own.

Arthur’s stories include hardships as well as triumphs. An open call for a road-company tour of “Call Me Mister” ended embarrassingly when the musical director persuaded her to switch her prepared piece for a rendition of “Summertime”--during which she realized she’d forgotten all but the opening lyric. But for Arthur, even the missteps had their silver linings. Her stint in the obscure “Shoestring Revue” happened to catch the eye of Norman Lear, who created the role of Edith Bunker’s liberal cousin Maude for her--and the rest was television history.

We learn a lot about the contours of Arthur’s career during the course of the show, but she keeps her private life at a guarded distance. Of course, not every solo performer needs to bare their struggles with failed relationships or life-threatening illness, but a better writer could establish more personal connections to the material Arthur presents, and the lessons she’s drawn from her life. As it is, what we get is familiarity without intimacy.

” ... And Then There’s Bea,” Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, Kavli Theater, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. Tonight-Sunday, 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $36.50-$39.50. (805) 583-8700, (213) 480-3232, and all Ticketmaster outlets. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.