This time, he exploits himself

It’s a rare comic actor who can make audiences laugh just by looking at him, but Eric Idle has that kind of presence. An unbridled goofball with a gift for parody, the 60-year-old Monty Python alum has played so many outrageous characters over the years that he is practically comedy incarnate.

Tonight, in what is being billed as an evening of “songs, skits and skirts,” Idle will conclude his “Greedy Bastard Tour” at the Henry Fonda Theatre in a show that mixes classic Python fare with stand-up comedy.

“This tour is much more like an evening with me,” said Idle, who toured three years ago with “Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python.” That show was a “flat-out Python revue,” he said, with “a bunch of people and costumes.”

This time around there are only three performers in addition to Idle -- his longtime songwriting partner, John Du Prez (the musical director, or M.D., who performs in scrubs); screenwriter and stand-up comic Peter Crabbe; and actress Jennifer Julian, who, among other things, performs in drag as a young Idle singing “All Things Dull and Ugly.”

Separated into two segments, the show will begin with the usual silliness -- singalongs to “The Spam Song” and other Python classics, reenactments of the Four Yorkshiremen, and appearances by any number of Idle’s alter egos, including the mop-topped Sir Dick McQuickley, leader of the Beatles parody band the Rutles. Idle will also perform bits from his new CD, “The Rutland Isles,” on which he masquerades as TV documentarian Nigel Spasm, narrating a mockumentary about a fictional chain of islands in the land of Melanoma.

After intermission, Idle will put away the costumes and take to the stage as himself, joking about the grim beginnings that led him to a life of comedy -- his father’s death when he was 2, life in post-World War II England and the 12 years he spent at a boarding school.

It’s this second segment of the show that’s a departure for Idle. “We never talked about ourselves on Python,” he said. “If you’re in a gang of people doing sketches, you’re sort of doing cabaret. There are people to help you, and you’re not being you.

“If you’re talking to the audience directly, you have to find a voice and a style and a manner in which to talk to them, and that’s what I’ve evolved over 40 shows. That’s new, and that’s something that I feel rather proud of....

“Then I can drop all these other people I’ve paid.”

Said Julian, who toured with Idle three years ago: “He’s never really gone out on his own and done stand-up. He’s always been behind characters.... This time around it’s very intimate. You really get to know about his life. As a performer, that takes a lot of courage to expose yourself like that.”

Idle got his start at the Footlights Club, a comedy group at the University of Cambridge, where he went to school. He then joined BBC-TV as a writer and performer. It was there that he met the future members of Monty Python -- five men who shared his affinity for cross-dressing, salacious comedy and silly skits. Together with Idle, fellow funnymen John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam formed “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” which debuted on the BBC in late 1969 and ran through ’73.

While the group disbanded shortly after the show’s final season, in subsequent years they re-formed for the films “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Life of Brian” and “Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life.”

More than 30 years after Monty Python’s debut, both the television show and the movies continue to win fans. They are cult classics on both sides of the Atlantic, so much so that audience members often dress up and sing along at Idle’s shows. “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is a particular favorite, said Idle, who after the tour will devote himself full time to a musical based on the film.

“Spamelot,” directed by Mike Nichols, will be casting next spring and is scheduled for a Broadway opening in February 2005.

“We’ll be looking for the funniest, best people we can find. I don’t think it’ll be hard. I think there are hundreds of thousands of funny people,” said Idle, who will help select the cast for the musical, even if neither he nor any of the original Monty Python members plan to perform in it.

“We’re old anyway. We can’t go leaping about onstage,” he said. “You know, you have to ride those horses. That was tiring enough when we were 28.”

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Eric Idle

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Where: Henry Fonda Theatre,

6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Cost: $35, general; $55, VIP

Contact: (323) 464-0808 or www.henryfondatheater.com