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Though there has been formidable competition from Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Mario Cantone (if not from Jackie Mason), the great Lily Tomlin remains one of the world’s most theatrical comedians, as she proved in her recent performance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

Ever since she burst on the scene in the 1960s as a star of the phenomenally successful TV show Laugh-In, Tomlin has offered comedy that’s based primarily in character rather than in one-liners. When you think about it, even her famous routine about Lud and Marie and the cake is hilarious not because the lines themselves are funny but because of the daughter’s hysterical reaction to her folks’ mind-numbing chatter about nothing.

Tomlin began her show at NJPAC with a flip remark to get the locals on her side: “Ever since I was a little girl in Detroit, I dreamed of one day playing Newark, New Jersey.” From there on, it was pretty much a love-fest. Tomlin as Edith Ann discoursed on what’s wrong with grown-ups; Tomlin as Ma Bell’s own Ernestine did some telephone fundraising for NJPAC, calling New Jersey senator/gubernatorial candidate Jon Corzine and threatening to blackmail him into a donation; and Tomlin as the schizophrenic bag lady Trudy observed that “reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.”

There were also memorable appearances by our old friends Mme. Lupé and Mrs. Beasley. In the guise of herself, Tomlin shared anecdotes of growing up in Detroit — e.g., “My mother told me that the people in Washington, D.C. wouldn’t be there if they didn’t know what they were doing” — and touched on subjects ranging from same-sex marriage to monster truck rallies. Despite the fact that she was not performing in an entirely gay-friendly venue in Manhattan or San Francisco, she admirably made a point of acknowledging Jane Wagner as her life partner as well as her professional collaborator.

Tomlin has been touring the country with this evening of classic comedy, and she still has some dates coming up. Try to catch her if you possibly can. For more information, click here.

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Like all great comedians, Lily Tomlin continually demonstrates that you don’t have to be vulgar to be funny. Sure, it’s easy for writers and performers to earn cheap laughs with swear words and references to bodily functions, but how much talent is involved in that? Not much, I’d say. So I find it disheartening that several shows currently or recently on the boards in NYC have trafficked in the most obscene “humor” imaginable.

Two of the chief offenders are Slut, now playing a limited engagement at the American Theatre of Actors, and Silence! The Musical, seen at the Lucille Lortel in August as part of FringeNYC. (My spies tell me that The Banger’s Flopera — presented as part of both the Fringe and the New York Musical Theatre Festival — was also pretty disgusting, but I was blessedly spared the experience.)

If you haven’t seen Slut, you’re missing out on a whole lot of colorful verbiage. One of the show’s big production numbers is about a ship christened the H.M.S. Donkey Balls, on which the male lead goes blithely sailing away. Later, our hero sings a song about his cock. (I’m not making this up, you know!) And, in perhaps the lowest of the show’s low points, the long-married parents of one of the characters put over an up-tune about their infidelity towards each other. Initially, the number is amusing because of the incongruity of this middle-aged couple being completely unashamed of their conduct; but as their tales of extra-marital sex become more and more graphic, you can feel a large percentage of the audience collectively turning red and tuning out.

Distressingly, a few people actually seem to like this sort of stuff. In an unintentionally hilarious posting on the theater chat board All That Chat, someone wrote: “I saw Slut yesterday and I have a section of ‘Slut of the World’ stuck in my head, but I’m forgetting some of the words. Please help: ‘What a slut, Christ, what a whore [forget this part up to…] the Slut of the World.’ ” I think that pretty much sums up this musical. In one of the more positive notices that Slut received, Zachary Pincus-Roth of Newsday wrote that the show “never embarrasses itself.” Well, now — that’s definitely a matter of opinion!

In terms of obscene material, Silence! was just as bad as Slut, even though it was leavened by excellent performances, direction, and choreography. (I feel ill when I think of some of the songs, which had titles like “If I Could Smell Her Cunt.”) It’s interesting to note that Spamalot, famous for its puerile humor, is actually a model of wit, sophistication, and restraint when compared to Slut or Silence! The consensus is that Broadway audiences will only stand for so much vulgarity, whereas Off- and Off-Off-Broadway audiences seem to feel that they have to accept blatantly vulgar theater because it’s “edgy.”

Even some shows that are not terribly offensive overall have specific characters or scenes that are rife with expletives and frank sex talk. In A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, author Richard Greenberg gives us an incorrigible senior named Sadie, played by Ann Guilbert of The Nanny fame. The woman lets fly with four-letter words whenever she feels the urge, repeatedly calls her former daughter-in-law a “dumb bitch,” and, at one point, offers a very crude description of a lesbian sex act.

When Avenue Q opened on Broadway, David Finkle wrote in his TheaterMania review of the show that he found it “highly entertaining yet somewhat troubling.” He looked askance at the musical’s frequent reliance on profanity, not to mention its explicit sex scene involving two puppets. At the time, I thought he was overreacting — but, in retrospect, I’m not so sure. Though Q isn’t solely or even largely responsible for the heightened level of vulgarity in the theater, an argument can be made that this multiple Tony Award winning show has given producers some degree of license to present other “entertainments” that are far more obscene but not nearly so well written.

All you writers out there, remember that what’s acceptable coming out of the mouth of a puppet can be disgusting if voiced by a human character. When crafting a show, please don’t push the envelope of good taste unless you have enough talent and skill to assure that the end product won’t be patently offensive.