Tracey Takes On

Tracey Ullman can't be pigeon-holed. Call her a comedienne whose Fox television show launched "The Simpsons," and you short-change her work as a pop singer, able to attract Paul McCartney to appear in her first music video, and as an actress who has appeared in movies directed by Lawrence Kasden, Robert Altman and Woody Allen. She's a comic chameleon in more ways than one, successfully working in any area she takes a mind to. Her biggest strength is her ability to slip into a variety of characters, and in her HBO series "Tracey Takes On," from which this book is based, Ullman has created 15 women and men, each immediately recognizable and all daffy in their own way. There's Linda Granger, the sexpot star of the 70s TV series "VIP Lounge," making a living from her residues, her autobiography ("I'm Still Here") and her line of Recovery dolls ("each one of them marks a milestone of survival in my life"); Sydney Kross, demon lawyer (motto: "You name it, we'll sue it"); Rayleen Gibson, "stuntwoman to the stars," who was raised by dingos in the Australian outback and is married to a dwarf; and gay airline steward Trevor Ayliss ("his favorite destinations remain Amsterdam, San Francisco and the Greek island of Mykonos"). With them, Ullman creates stories and incidents whose humor are rooted in character. But she doesn't stop there. "Tracey Takes On" combines series footage, scripts, essays and material created especially for the book to give the characters as much realism as they appear on the show. A lot of effort went into this book, and the result is a lovely comic gem of a book.