Channing leaves a lasting impression
Video clips introduced Carol Channing before she appeared onstage Sunday at the Berklee Performance Center. There Channing was on "Hollywood Squares," and the question was, "What is the longest-lived of all the land creatures?," and the star had the answer, her lipsticked grin stretched out and up toward her ears. "Me," she said.
Channing is, in fact, 83, but she doesn't seem to mind. The title of her one-woman show is "The First 80 Years Are the Hardest." Channing left her signature blond wigs at home and appeared onstage with gray hair in unruly pigtails -- another wig? -- and a glam outfit of scarlet and glitter.
She reminisced about her career in show business; dished the dirt about famous colleagues; offered dazzling impressions of Sophie Tucker, Tallulah Bankhead, Yul Brynner, and Ethel Merman; and delivered some of her signature songs, including, of course, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" and "Hello, Dolly" -- for that, she enlisted the audience to sing the parts of the singing waiters in that show.
Some of the stories were very funny. Channing described her first meeting and audition with the head of the William Morris Agency when she was fresh out of Bennington College; she offered him the "Orestes Funeral Chant" and various outr ethnic specialties. She might well have sung a Handel aria as well -- years ago, in an interview with this reporter, Channing claimed familiarity with Handel and proved it by singing the aria "Lascia ch'io piango" from "Rinaldo."
Her Sophie Tucker complained of "diverticulosis." Channing, as herself, then corrected her, "diverticulitis." "It's the plural," Tucker shot back. An account of her command performances for British royalty led Channing into a hilarious comment on British teeth and the speech mannerisms that result from trying to cover them up with a stiff upper lip.
Channing's singing voice remains a whiskey baritone of considerable character; sustained notes are a challenge, but she has perfected the art of speaking her songs. She also remains pretty limber and did a few kicks, bumps, and grinds in her dance numbers. Last year she married her junior high school sweetheart, Harry Kullijan, 70 years after they met; she brought him onstage for some sweet, reminiscent chatter and a soft-shoe to "Tea for Two."
Channing's memory sometimes played dodgeball with her, and she would circle around the story she intended to tell, beginning it several ways until she found the thread that would lead her in; a couple of times she had to scoot to the piano and look on her list, reassuring the audience, "Once I get this show learned, I will come and perform it for you in the privacy of your own homes."
It was hard to tell how much of the ditsy, scatterbrained approach was part of the act -- just as it was always hard to tell whether we were watching Channing as Lorelei Lee or Dolly Levi or whether those women had somehow joined the large company of Carol Channing impersonators.
Like her most famous roles, Channing is a worldly innocent, and there's a whole lot more to her than she lets on -- her French, for example, is impeccable, and she didn't leave her intellectual interests behind her at Bennington. The lights dimmed as she climbed on a stool and delivered Dolly's final monologue to her deceased husband. Channing performed it with the magnificent diction, discipline, and majestic pacing of a classical actress, and she played her voice like a cello. Still, her greatest characterization is not Lorelei or even Dolly -- it's Carol Channing.
