CENTER `STAGE' THIS IS CHARLES NELSON REILLY'S LIFE ... AND WELCOME TO IT.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

``To make a long story short ... '' Charles Nelson Reilly says, somehow managing to keep a straight face while the words escape his lips.

It's a ``who are you kidding?'' line if ever one existed. The man is a raconteur who routinely allows one tale to spin, unplanned, into another and still keeps an eager listener awaiting the outcome. There's the celebrity factor, of course. When you've spent as much time around famous people as Reilly has, you collect tales. Reilly happens to be especially good at spinning them. How can you not listen in when someone begins a sentence with ``Wolfgang Puck is a nice guy ... ''

And Reilly knows he'll never be in danger of a word shortage. ``You can condense this to two pages,'' he says, before detailing an especially memorable night on the town in New York with his former acting teacher, Uta Hagen.

Heck, if the 70-year-old performer-director knew how to make long stories short, there would be no ``Save It for the Stage!'' the one-person show about - and performed by - Reilly. The show, which is headed for San Francisco and the Irish Repertory Theater in New York, plays the El Portal Center for the Arts in North Hollywood through July 15.

Following a sold-out run in Florida in 1999, ``Save It for the Stage!'' enjoyed a successful run last summer at Burbank's Falcon Theater, where Daily News reviewer Julio Martinez called it a ``bizarre emotional roller coaster ride from utter pathos to flat-out hilarity, sometimes within the same sentence.'' It replaces the previously scheduled ``We Are Family'' a comedy by ``Tootsie'' co-author Murray Schisgal.

The show has changed, but Reilly admits that he has difficulty making cuts. ``We played five months in two theaters, never to an empty seat,'' he says during a salty two-hour interview. ``They laugh an awful lot and that makes me happy. You expend a lot of information in 2 1/2 hours, but if I wasn't on stage, I'd be talking somewhere anyway, so this way I get paid for it.''

Reilly's Coldwater Canyon-area house is a museum of the Life of Reilly. Caricatures, photos, theater and opera posters, and countless mementos dot every wall and cover every surface. Here's Burt Reynolds, there's Ruby Dee, here's Charles Durning and Julie Harris in a production of ``The Gin Game.'' All are old friends who drop in and out of his life and his stories.

But perhaps the oldest friend of all is someone Reilly never met, and only saw perform once: Ruth Draper, the woman most people credit with inventing the one-person show. Draper was a monologuist who would enact several different characters in the course of a single performance without the use of scenery, extensive costumes or props. She provided the inspiration for Lily Tomlin after Reilly, Tomlin's teacher at the time, suggested she explore the one-person format because he felt she didn't mesh on stage with other actors.

Reilly is constantly encouraging students to create one-person plays for themselves, and is forever working on a new project with a well-established actor: Durning as P.T. Barnum, Brent Briscoe as Jack Kerouac, Ossie Davis as architect Paul Revere Williams. Reilly directed ``The Belle of Amherst,'' Julie Harris' one-woman celebration of poet Emily Dickinson, a production that will last as long as Harris - who recently suffered a stroke - does.

``It's Ruth Draper's fault that Emily Dickinson's home is now being shown again, that you can go into a drug store in Jupiter, Fla., and find a book of her poetry,'' says Reilly. ``That's because Ruth Draper did 'The Italian Lesson' and I heard it on the radio. She was a real actor. She was what an actor should be.''

Reilly, who seems to read every clip of every article or advertisement, seems alternately bemused and chagrined at the perception that he is nothing more than a washed-up game-show fixture with famous friends. He opens ``Save It for the Stage!'' with the observation that so many people are convinced he's dead.

As for the ``name dropping'' banner, Reilly says he's known these people ``all my life.''

``People don't know I direct plays and get nominated for Tony awards on Broadway,'' he says. ``The San Francisco Chronicle calls me a 'blast from the past.' I got nominated for three Emmy awards in 1997, 1998 and 1999. How late blasted can we get here?''

And those who only know Reilly's manic personas will also find more tender moments in his one-man show, says Jim Brochu, the El Portal's artistic director. Brochu first met Reilly when he was selling orange drink at the back of the St. James Theater.

``He told me that he used to sell orange drink at the Alvin Street Theater and that if he could make it, so could I,'' said Brochu. ``Thirty- seven years later, I'm signing his checks.''

``SAVE IT FOR THE STAGE!''

Where: El Portal Center for the Arts, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through July 15.

Tickets: $30 to $45. Call [phone].

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Photo:

Charles Nelson Reilly is perhaps best-known as a panelist on the old ``Match Game'' series, but as his one-man show makes clear, there's much more to him than that.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer