With It’s a Slippery Slope, Spalding Gray returns to his sturdy onstage writing table, a few sheets of white paper laid out, to look up at audiences and tell yet another embellished life story. Again, the tale is of a middle-aged white guy from New England and his various neurotic anomalies, but this time Gray probes his learning to ski at 53 on Arizona slopes, stretches back to his quiet childhood set to a Beethoven soundtrack, and skips ahead to his first minutes alone with his newborn child. All these moments seem sprinkled with a light layer of powder, as Gray repaints his life with pastels, vs. the fingerpaints of Monster in a Box and the watercolors of Swimming to Cambodia. Gray never gets up from his chair but calls listeners in, making sewing-circle intimacy out of barn-sized concert halls. He spins his yarn passively, without the pomp of contemporary Garrison Keillor or the tech of Laurie Anderson. See how far there is to fall at 8 p.m. Friday, April 17, and 7:30 p.m. Saturday & Sunday, April 18 & 19, at the Barns of Wolf Trap, 1624 Trap Rd., Vienna. $28. (703) 938-2404. (Ginger Eckert)