If you think of Marvin Hamlisch as a composer only, then you don’t know Hamlisch. He not only is one of America’s leading film score, pop tune and musical composers, all of which is very impressive on its own – go ahead and count the Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, Tony, Golden Globe and Pulitzer quotient on this guy. But he proved Friday at the Maine Center for the Arts that he also is an entertainer and a comedian.

Hamlisch opened with a tender piece from “Ice Castles,” and then immediately launched into a humorous assault on Bangor’s airport, which employs considerably fewer staff than he is used to in New York. So few, in fact, Hamlisch speculated that Bangor has only “one plane that goes all over the world.” He continued: “I saw something at your airport that I haven’t seen in 20 years. I think you call it Pan Am.”

It was the first of many clever riffs Hamlisch delivered in nearly two hours of concertizing from both his considerable repertoire and the works of other composers, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Rodgers. For several of the songs, he was joined by Broadway tenor Stephen Lehew.

While Hamlisch’s quick wit may have been a revelation to some in the audience, his evocative piano playing came as no surprise. After all, this is the man who wrote the music to “The Way We Were,” “A Chorus Line” and “The Sting.” Plus he was Barbra Streisand’s music director when she went on tour and on TV in the 1990s. He knows how to make an audience feel every emotional nuance in his music.

Hamlisch played Joplin rags; a tribute to Rodgers; a medley of songs he wishes he had written, including “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “Always”; and a medley of songs that were nominated for Academy Awards but lost, such as his own James Bond hit “Nobody Does It Better.” He also performed the “Chorus Line” overture, which never made it into the actual show. His childhood friend, pianist Lorin Hollander, who lives in Maine and was in the audience, joined Hamlisch onstage and soulfully performed Gershwin’s Prelude for Piano No. 2.

A regular feature in Hamlisch’s concerts is “rent-a-conductor,” a music game in which he asks the audience to make up song titles and then he composes a song, with lyrics, to suit it. He discarded the first suggested title “The Class of ’44” in favor of “Geriatric Rage,” but impressively managed to weave both ideas into a side-splitting hit with the audience.

One of the most charming stories Hamlisch told was about the time his mother was invited to cook her goulash on “The Mike Douglas Show” years ago. When Douglas asked Mrs. Hamlisch who her favorite composer was, she answered: “Richard Rodgers.” And then said softly to her son who was standing nearby: “I couldn’t lie.”

At the beginning of the evening, Hamlisch made fun of the idea of a concert given by a composer. Wouldn’t you rather see a rock star? He had a point. Who wants to see a guy sit at a piano and run down a list of his own accomplishments? The truth is: If anyone could get away with that format, it’s Hamlisch. Still, he pushes for something more, something that conveys not only his music but the joy he gets from delivering it personally to enthusiastic fans.