There’s nothing like a Dame Edna
By Juliet Schoen / Theater Critic
She tells the audience members they are aging “tragically” but that she is not. How very true. Dame Edna, the female alter ego of Sir Barry Humphries, has been doing her thing for more than 50 years and is as fresh as ever, in both senses of the word. Now performing at the Ahmanson Theater, she has her many fans flocking to see her. A sort of Australian Jackie Mason, she manages to insult, charmingly, a vast range of people
She is particularly bent on subduing the seniors in the audience and the newly impoverished Wall Streeters who, she says, are no longer sitting in the orchestra but are relegated to the upper balcony. “Nouveaux pauvres,” she calls them.
Dressed as always in a glittering gown, mauve wig and fantail glasses, she glides about the floor making pointed, timely remarks about society. She speaks directly to those unfortunate enough to sit in the fronts rows, asking intimate questions. When one woman says that she lives in Beverly Hills, Dame Edna asks, pointedly, “North of Wilshire?” She then comments on her blouse, saying the color will be coming back one day.
Her humor, while sometimes rather sharp, is muted by her warmth and sunny smile. At one point she asks four women and a man to come to the stage to be interrogated in the mode of talk show programs. Lamenting the debilities of aging, she addresses the man as “Senior.” He gets back at her when she asks a simple question and he says, “I can’t remember.”
Dame Edna’s act is part philosophy, part nostalgia. The quality she exudes is hard to describe because she is so unique. A man dressed as a woman, she can make fun of gynecological apparatus as well as prostate problems. I heard a man comment that Dame Edna was a large woman towering over everyone. It is hard to believe that anyone was unaware of the fact that “she” was created by Barry Humphries, an Australian actor and painter who has appeared in numerous movies and television shows.
Dame Edna takes a well-deserved bow at the end of the show and then reappears in black tie, as Barry Humphries. He receives an even greater ovation.