THEATER REVIEW: Dame Edna gets audiences laughing
As much as they may laugh, audiences can never love Dame Edna as much as she loves herself.
“You adore me,” she told her possums early in her opening night show at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall Monday. “Isn’t it strange? I can say that and it doesn’t sound conceited, because it’s true.”
And she’s right. Dame Edna Everage can pretty much get away with saying anything she wants, because she can insult you and you still feel better for laughing with her.
“I don’t pick on people, I empower them,” she says.
Dressed in a multicolored, glittery gown with swirls and ruffles of orange and yellow, she is quite a sight. And her upswept mauve hair fits perfectly inside the purple Van Wezel.
“You have thoughtfully painted in my color,” she says. “You must have known I was coming.”
Her show, “The First Last Tour,” is a combination of storytelling and insult stand-up comedy. She does call on people in the audience who get interviewed from their seats before they are eventually called on stage to be interviewed for what she says is a pilot for a new TV series.
Those people suffer for the benefit of the rest of us, as she cuts down their outfits, their choice of home décor or their forgetfulness.
“This is a lovely conversation between two people, one of whom is a lot more interesting than the other,” she says.
The show includes an appearance by her tough daughter Valmai (played by Erin-Kate Whitcomb), dressed in prison garb while she’s out doing community service.
“I’m a successful actress but a failure as a mother, but I blame that on my children,” she says, before launching into an ode to her costume-designing son, Kenny, accompanied by her pianist Andrew Ross, who spends much of the rest of the evening laughing with everyone else.
She shares stories about competing with Madonna to adopt a baby, helping Michelle Obama with her fashion choices and her good friend, Queen Elizabeth.
You can easily get lost in Dame Edna’s wicked sense of humor and easy banter and never think twice about what a finely honed performance is being delivered by actor Barry Humphries, who plays her. In a twist from past shows, the star dashes off stage during a standing ovation before the spotlight rises again on Humphries himself. He usually stays in the background but gratefully basks in the applause.
Dame Edna’s “First Last Tour” Reviewed Monday. Continues at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $50-$80. 953-3368; www.vanwezel.org.