Rita Rudner brings her stand-up comedy to McCurdy’s

Rita Rudner was born and raised in Miami. If she doesn’t seem like that kind of person, she said, there’s a good reason.

“I was born in Coconut Grove,” she said in a phone interview. “But I was never a Miami kid. I never went to the beach. I was never outside. I was always in the dance studio.”

Rudner became one of the best-known comedians in the country — and, in the early days of her stand-up stardom, one of the very few women in big-time comedy — but she got her start in show biz as a singer and dancer on Broadway. She left Miami and moved to New York at age 15, and before long she had amassed some solid Broadway credits, including roles in “Annie,” “Follies,” “Mack and Mabel” and “Promises, Promises.”

But after a while she figured it was time for a change.

“You don’t get better at dancing when you get older,” she said. “I just found that I had an interest in being funny. I decided to try to do comedy mostly to do something that not a lot of women do. There were only two that I could think of, Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, and I became friends with both of them.”

That was back in the late 1970s, and Rudner’s been a top-drawer comic ever since.

She’ll bring her stand-up act to McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre in Sarasota for four shows this weekend.

Rudner used to be a fixture on TV, including regular appearances on “The Tonight Show” back in the Johnny Carson days.

You probably haven’t seen her work in the past 15 years or so, though at least not on TV. She spent more than a decade working almost exclusively in Las Vegas.

“I did 12 years in Vegas,” she said. “I didn’t have to travel, I just got up and went to work every night.”

It was ideal situation, she said, that allowed her to keep doing the comedy that she loved doing and still be around to raise her daughter.

But she’s 63 now, and not crazy about working every single night. She and husband, producer Martin Bergman, and their daughter Molly now have homes in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

“Now,” she said, “I split my time between Vegas and L.A., and I just do the shows that I want to do.”

Her comedy is still essentially of the same flavor as her work that people remember from her television days. She talks a lot about her life and love, and being a 60-something mother of a teenage girl.

Her daughter is 14, and she’s at that the age where she finds adults inherently embarrassing.

“Even when I just start to sing along with the radio, she rolls her eyes at me,” Rudner said. “I say ‘But I sang on Broadway!’ And she says ‘Don’t, Mom. Just don’t.” ”

Details: 6:30 and 8:45 p.m. Feb. 24-25, McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, 1923 Ringling Blvd., Sarasota. $38. 941-925-3869, mccurdyscomedy.com.

This story was originally published February 22, 2017 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Rita Rudner brings her stand-up comedy to McCurdy’s."