Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Make no bones about it; there is no audience for this Grand Dame of Comedy. She calls people in the balcony, Paupers, and those in the orchestra her Possums.

Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance! devised and written by Barry Humphries. Photo by Greg Gorman

Would that she belonged to us so we could call her a National Treasure. Better yet, she falls into the category of belonging to one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Chances are her influence reaches far beyond our globe into the Universe.

There are probably a million plus comics and Would Be’s running around loose out of their cages. A fraction of those possibly could be classified as comediennes. A small fraction, a very small fraction, of those who are honestly funny.

At least, for me. It is no secret I am hard on comedy. So much passes for comedy that is anything but funny.

Dame Edna Everage stands at the top of the truly very honest Funny people. With all of her Las Vegas glitz, outrageous clothes, distinguishable eyeglasses, she walks like a football player imitating his grandmother. Funny as she is, Dame Edna is a class act.

Ater five years, she has returned to the Temple Buell Theatre for a two week run. For a sheer, total unadulterated evening of all too short entertainment, Dame Edna glides onto stage from the rafters seated on an over-sized pair of her glittering glasses.

It’s difficult to believe she doesn’t live here. She knows more about Denver than a good many people who have lived here a very long time. All of this means is, this Grand Gal of Funny does her homework. Perhaps her Stage Manager, Barry Humphries does it for her. On stage she has the lay of the land down pat, geographically and politically.

Preying and prying on unsuspected audience members, she draws pertinent information from them, making up her own story along the way, so oiled, so slick one can’t help but think it’s scripted, which is impossible.

Dame Edna cuts to the quick without drawing blood. Her arrogance carries warmth. Her superior status reigns with compassion. She jabs with a soft punch. In her riveting non-stop monologue and dialogue with unsuspecting Possums, she swells with funniness without being vulgar. There is no funny in anger, harshness or meanness. She has captured the magic of putting down with the gentility of a lioness cuffing her offspring for being too rowdy, or in her case, perhaps not rowdy enough.

What’s even more amazing is much of her material demands spontaneity. Playing with the audience as a cat might with a possum, her material depends upon how the possums respond to her. She’s a quick draw from the hip, never missing a beat.

Assisting her on stage are the two gorgeous Ednaettes, Teri Digianfelice and Michelle Pampena. How they manage a straight face is beyond me. Master of the Dame’s Musick, Wayne Barker on a Baby Grand Piano controls his dignity in musical mastery, in spite of the grand dame’s flamboyant antics.

Bringing unsuspecting audience members on stage, grilling them with carefully contrived questions, then on a speaker phone calling their mother’s wherever the might be. If no one is home, she leaves a detailed message.

Toward the end she brings all those she has interviewed on stage to rehearse a portion of a movie based on her life. They are costumed and handed a script. On opening night the scene had to do with her telling her mother she was going into show business.

Miss this show and you’ll miss a night of entertainment that is simply near impossible to duplicate. She’s a Master of entertainment. England should knight her. We ought to ask her to run for the U.S. Presidency. Terrorism and the fear of terrorism would disappear because all sides would be laughing too hard. Hurricane victims would reach for the stars because her probing, prodding, jabbing, would inspire them. I wish I were a cartoonist. I have a magnificent Disney cartoon blooming in my head over several deadly, intricate world situations. Can’t you see her interviewing Bin Laden? Or President Bush? Or negotiating terms in the Middle East? And oh, mercy, what she could do with Iraq and Iran. Can’t you see her at peace negotiation meetings? At the UN?

Asking too much of her? Maybe, but what we can do is ask Denver Center Attractions to bring her back every few years so for one night we can breathe her magic.

She gives tongue lashing without being mean, pandering and mocking without belittling, crude, angry or blistering, she puts people on the spot without spotting the people.

She’s psychic and reads shoes. She “feels the waves of Colorado skepticism washing over her.”

Laughing at herself, she insists “Hers is a perfect show for senior citizens as there are no plot lines.”

She doesn’t pick on people. She empowers them.

At the beginning of Act II, she addresses the audience with “I didn’t think I’d like you, and I don’t, but decided to stay to the end of the show.”

Bringing a young couple on stage that had been married for four years, she takes them into in depth counseling stating to the audience “what happens here stays here.”

In the skit about her early life, she says she doesn’t want a polished performance because she knows she’s not going to get it.

Gladiolas are her signature flower, throwing several out into the audience calling it her “glad time.”

Dame Edna is a prize, and we win.

Bows and applause to her Stage manager Barry Humphries who should be given the Pulitzer Prize for laughter and for having learned a long time ago, doing your homework pays off.

Just don’t tell her I live in West Denver.