Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford – until 23 April 2022
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
4****
Dapper in velvet jacket and pink socks, Barry Humphries takes us on a tour through his long and colourful life, beginning in the suburbs of Melbourne in the 1930s (yes, it has been a long life). Early in the show he confides that the stage feels like his safe place – it’s where he can be ‘alone at last’. And he can still work a crowd – there were moments when it felt as if he might have lost the thread of whatever anecdote he was telling, but he always caught us in the end with a laugh-aloud, sometimes shocking, punchline. Latecomers and people in the front row beware – he is still the master of the catty putdown.
With an ornate gilt-framed screen for photos and videos, an armchair, and a pianist providing occasional background music, Humphries talks about his childhood and his parents, who come across as baffled by their son, but supportive, sort-of. How could they have known that genteel mid-20th century Australia would be such a goldmine of comic material for their boy? We hear about Humphries’s early acting career, and taking Twelfth Night on a tour of small towns, where he and his fellow actors met a lot of lady mayoresses … who eventually evolved into Dame Edna Everage. Dame Edna also owes quite a lot to Humphries’s mum. It’s somehow deeply satisfying to learn that Mrs H described smart social events as ‘hats and glads’ – meaning gladioli.
In the second half we see several clips of Dame Edna, who seems to have effortlessly spanned different eras – one moment we see her with Michael Parkinson and a very young Elton John, the next she is with Charles and Camilla, and an aspiring, over-talkative MP called Boris Johnson. The one thing they have in common is that they are generally collapsing into helpless giggles under the full fire of Dame Edna’s comic genius. Clips of his Les Patterson character lead Humphries in a swift mood-change to talk about getting through alcoholism, which almost destroyed him. There are other moving moments too, such as when he talks warmly about Emily Perry, who played Dame Edna’s downtrodden companion Madge.
Barry Humphries arrived in England with just a few pence in his pocket. His life and career have been incredibly rich, with some dark material that is barely touched on here. This show must be a highly edited version, but it’s charming, clever, rude, riveting and funny. My favourite line was one about modern comedians, who – but no, you have to hear it from the man himself.