Martin Short again rides with a couple of cronies

A great thing about inviting

Martin Short

to a party - he brings along amusing friends.

Like Irving Cohen, the feisty, 90-plus Tin Pan Alley tunesmith and raconteur. Or the nerdly Ed Grimley, always with something doofy on his mind, I must say. Then there's Jackie Rogers Jr., the hipster brother (from another dad and mother) of Sammy Davis Jr. And if the buffet's big enough, Short might also coax Jiminy Glick to stuff his, er, show his face - he being the unctuous interviewer of the stars who always brings the subject back to himself.

Any and all of these dudes might be along for the ride as the man never short on talent participates Sunday night in the Peco Pops at the Mann "Three Singular Sensations," a music and comedy soiree co-starring composer/pianist Marvin Hamlisch and Broadway fave Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Dreamed up by and debuting at the Mann, "it's what you call a symphony show," Short shared in a recent chat from his lakeside summer cabin in Rosseau, Ontario, Canada. "So there are fixed elements but also some room for improvisation - me annoying Marvin or running out into the audience to grab three guys to be my 'Three Amigos,' " a nod to the hit movie in which Short co-starred with good buds Steve Martin and Billy Crystal.

"Each of us [Marvin, Brian and Martin] gets about 30 minutes on our own, which is about right. And we do things together - like Frank and Sammy and Dean . . . or Liza. It's designed to be loose and fun, musical and eccentric, and nobody overstays his welcome."

That last comment seems key to Short's career philosophy. While he made his mark initially in sketch comedy, with the golden-age cast of "SCTV," then on "Saturday Night Live," Short has always been "more of a variety artist, harking back to my childhood in Ontario, putting on imaginary shows in my attic. And that's a Canadian performer's nature that we share with the British - the 'Do you want me to bring a suit?' attitude. Whatever the job requires, we're ready. Song, dance, slapstick, high drama - no problem."

He described English actress Judi Dench as "a role model for me. Dame Judi is a phenomenal actress. But she's not adverse to taking a toothpaste commercial or being on a TV show. You'd never hear her saying, 'I'm an Oscar winner, I can't do that.' "

In L.A., where Short mostly lives, "performers usually stick to one thing. They can make enough with one movie job, in two or three weeks, to cover the rent for the year, then just spend the rest of their time looking for the next part in the same vein. But after 40 years at this, at age 61, I need more. I want to keep doing something else to keep it honest, interesting."

And different.

The idea of an SCTV reunion with Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, et al doesn't interest him in the least, "in part because John [Candy] is no longer here. What did Thomas Wolfe write about - 'you can't go home again'? Sometimes people do go back - cast members of 'Saturday Night Live' go back. But they're not as effective as they originally were on the show. Maybe it's they're not working so hard at it. Or else they're no longer at a stage in their life where they want to make their career their whole life. I know I feel that way."

A couple of writers were hovering around Short as we talked, ready to get back to work on the TV special he's prepping to shoot in Canada for CBC and HBO.

Short will be popping up, too, in recurring roles on "Weeds" and "How I Met Your Mother."

Also on his agenda, a voice part (working alongside O'Hara, Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton) in the next Tim Burton film "Frankenweenie," "actually a remake of what was his first film."

Oh, and after the half-dozen concerts he's doing with show packager Hamlisch and Stokes Mitchell, Short said he's likely to do "a couple more this year with Steve Martin. We just did one in Chicago. He brings his banjo and I bring my . . . me."

Short believes "you have to keep going back to the stage because the longer you're off, the harder it is to do. And the good thing is, as long as there's potential of failure, it never gets dull. In a show like this one, the audience doesn't care what you say as much as they just want to feel they're hanging with you and you're all having fun. And as long as just some of them are getting my jokes - like, 'I'm a three-time Tony winner but two of them are daytime Tonys' - then that's good enough for me."

In fact, Short's done more than his share of Tony-quality stage musical work, too.

That's how he connected with Marvin Hamlisch in 1992, starring in Hamlisch's adaptation of "The Goodbye Girl." Since then, the singer/dancer/comic actor has won favor in revivals of "Promises, Promises" and "Little Me" and his amazing one-man show (amazing in part because there was actually a support cast) called "Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me."

Then there was that seven-month run he did with Jason Alexander in the L.A. version of "The Producers."

"I'd actually turned down the original Broadway role [which went to Matthew Broderick] because I didn't want to leave my three small children [now all grown and on their own]. Of course, it turned out to be the biggest hit in 40 years, but who knows if it would have been that with me?"

Aw, modesty becomes you too, Martin.

Martin Short, Marvin Hamlisch and Brian Stokes Mitchell, plus special guest singer/dancer Mark Nadler and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Mann Center, 52nd and Parkside Ave., 8 p.m. Sunday, $75, $49, $29, $19, 215-893-1999, www.manncenter.org.