Review: John Lithgow Champions the Art of Storytelling

It's not so much the stories themselves, but how and why they were told.

In ''John Lithgow: Stories By Heart,'' the actor offers some charming remembrances of his family and why the telling of tales and poems formed such an important part of his growing up.

The one-man show, playing Sundays and Mondays through June 2 at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, is an accomplished feat of memorization but it finds its heart in Lithgow's touching autobiographical recollections of the people who first told these tales to him.

The Newhouse is a cozy theater, and Lithgow, nattily dressed in a dark jacket, dark pants and an open-collar purple shirt, sits for much of the time in the warm glow of what could be a parlor setting, maybe your grandmother's parlor.

It's Lithgow's grandmother, Ina B. Lithgow, who inspired the actor's first recitation. Grammy, as Lithgow calls her, was a plumpish, white-haired New Englander with a fondness for words. No wonder she could recite by heart ''The Deacon's Masterpiece; or The Wonderful One-hoss Shay,'' a lengthy poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

It's a luxurious, tongue-tripping epic of a sturdy carriage built to last for 100 years and then, self-destruct. Lithgow delivers it with exuberance and evident fondness for the woman who must have given him her impish sense of humor.

But the majority of the 90-minute evening is devoted to the telling of P.G. Wodehouse's comic short story, ''Uncle Fred Flits By.'' The piece was a favorite of the Lithgow children and was included in an anthology of short stories called ''Tellers of Tales,'' edited by Somerset Maugham.

Lithgow's father, Arthur, would often read from the book and ''Uncle Fred'' — in which he would play all the parts — was, by far, his children's favorite.

Lithgow holds the copy of the book from his childhood and pretty much acts out the tale. It's the giddy, very, very British story of an eccentric relative who wreaks havoc on the nerves of his more conventionally minded nephew.

The actor frames the tale with a story of his own — why he read it to his father, who was in frail health at the time and in need of cheering up. It's a poignant framework to Wodehouse's sublime silliness.

What with the Internet and Web sites, the oral tradition of storytelling is an endangered art form, but Lithgow in ''Stories By Heart,'' is an effective, ardent promoter of a vanishing form of entertainment.