ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
She is small, slender and subdued. Her face, devoid of makeup, is a pale oval underneath dark brown hair. Dressed in black T-shirt and slacks, she seems to recede under the lights of the room.
THIS is Tracey Ullman, creature of a thousand guises?
Well, yeah. It makes a kind of sense that Ullman would take refuge off-screen in the noncostume of black-on-black, with no images to project and no personalities on call but her own.
On-screen, in HBO's half-hour comedy ``Tracey Takes On ...,'' she translates herself into a half-dozen other people.
Each of her characters represents a perspective on the night's given topic. On last week's premiere it was ``Tracey Takes on ... Romance,'' but in coming weeks she'll take on fame, charity, and maybe a few of the less deadly sins.
The British actress and comedian first showed U.S. audiences her willingness to submerge herself in character in 1987, when her variety showcase, ``The Tracey Ullman Show,'' debuted on the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Co.
She and it won Emmy Awards in 1989 and 1990, when it left the air. Film work followed - ``I Love You to Death,'' ``Robin Hood: Men in Tights'' and ``I'll Do Anything,'' while she resisted returning to series TV work.
``I've never wanted to do just the one character,'' Ullman explained.
``I just couldn't tie myself into situation comedy where you have the sofa in the foreground and the stairs in the background and you're always the same person and you come in that door and there's two cute kids -...
``How many funny things could you think of do with the staircase? I couldn't do it.''
Ullman, in her Emmy Award-winning 1993 HBO special, ``Tracey Ullman: Takes On New York'' introduced some of the characters you'll meet.
They include Fern Rosenthal, Long Island matron whose exquisite pronunciation of the Yiddish ``tookus'' rolls off her palate; Linda Granger, former Broadway star; self-made ``upper-class bitch'' Susan Pillsworthy; and jut-jawed Trevor, the gay flight attendant.
``I love Trevor. I've always wanted to do one of those gay air stewards because they're always so lovely to me. As Linda says (lowering her voice to the throaty, teeth-clenched contralto of the washed-up Linda Granger): ``I have a wonderful homosexual fan base, and I LOVE them!''
Ullman also makes a lewd, leering pig out of Chic the cab driver, a hairy dude from somewhere in the Middle East who's utterly certain he's irresistible to women. (``Of course, my wrists are a little thin,'' she admits.)
``I did Chic just once, at 1 in the morning, driving around in that cab,'' Ullman said. ``I filmed eight monologues.''
Say, just how many souls really are teeming in that head?
``Oh, limitless, limitless. I create people nowadays just to prove a point,'' she said. ``I take on men now. I'll try anybody now, although I think I'd have trouble doing Shaquille O'Neal.''
Maybe. Maybe not.
There's only one place you'll see Ullman as herself in each show, and that's at the opening of each episode, as she word-associates her way into the night's topic.
``You can see me as me - a little brunette girl with a big nose - and then you get into the main body of the show,'' she said.
``I don't want to waste time being me. It's not funny.''
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. & 2. Tracey Ullman (shown here as two of theby CNBcharacters she portrays) says the number of souls teeming in her
head are "limitless."