You've never read an interview with Baby Jane Hudson or Ab Fab's Patsy Stone because, well, ( insert loud stage whisper ) they aren't real people. But while Dame Edna Everage, megastar, swami, talkshow host and creator of the World Prostate Olympics exists in the same mythical plane as Miss Hudson and Miss Stone, through the wonders of modern journalism the Dame has been gracious enough to grant us a peek at what really makes this jewel-laden, sequin-covered star sparkle.
For all of you who have spending the last several years under a rock, let us review: Dame Edna is, at least according to her, the most popular and gifted woman in the world today. Possibly Jewish, Dame Edna is a widow with three grown children who spends her time visiting world leaders and jet-setting between her homes in Malibu, London, Melbourne, Switzerland and Martha's Vineyard. Her hobbies include counseling Royalty, addressing gender issues, redefining cultural strategies and posing for photographs with refugees.
Dame Edna's amazingly glamorous and exciting life has empowered her with an infinite amount of wisdom which she freely dispenses, along with a few well placed barbs and insults, to audiences across the country in her new show, Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.
"Chicagoans can expect a hurricane of happiness, a tornado of tough love, a twister of tenderness and a monsoon of megastar magic when Cyclone Edna blows into the Windy City," proclaims the Dame, who says she never works from a pre-written script. "I don't write my material, I think aloud on stage. People have tried to write so-called gags for me, which have been pitiful. I'm not a standup. I'm a sit-down. I'm not even a comedienne. I'm a therapist. My theatres are massage parlors for the human spirit."
Those theatres-cum-massage parlors, which have been described as a cross between a Las Vegas wedding chapel and Barbie's doll house, will feature the Dame singing ( screeching ) and dancing ( stomping ) in up to six different shimmering frocks designed by her possibly gay "son" Kenneth.
But it is the Dame's unique ability to, as she describes it, "trawl through the auditorium" in search of audience members who look ripe for some "gentle probing" that has made the Tony award-winning show such a wild success. "Do you believe in reincarnation?" she once asked someone in her New York City audience. "Because you look like you used to be something!"
Her improvised zings, such as this one, are delivered with such charm and grace that her victims usually feel all warm and bubbly inside until they realize moments later that they have been insulted. The Royal Tour also includes what one New York paper described as "David-Letterman-style sequences" in which she orders food from local restaurants for members of the audience that look particularly thin and makes telephone calls to friends and baby sitters of other people in the audience. Dame Edna turns her nose up in the air when elements of her show are openly compared to others. "People copy me. Women copy me slavishy," she sniffs. "Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand are just some of the few, and the innovations of my mold breaking talkshow of the late '80s can still be seen in a much less funny way on Letterman and Leno!"
So where exactly did this woman with "natural" wisteria hair color and a penchant for calling her fans "possums" come from? According to Dame Edna's counterpart, actor Barry Humphries, it all started in 1965 with a sketch he wrote that was centered around a Melbourne housewife, Miss Everage, during his tenure at an Australian acting troupe. Humphries, who applies his own makeup every night as a way to move into character, is not gay, though he is certainly gay friendly. In fact, he is married to British poet Elizabeth ( Lizzie ) Spender and has two sons and two daughters. In an interview with The New York Times, Humphries, who rarely sits down for interviews as "himself," had this to say about individuals who don't believe a straight man could such a convincing job playing a woman: "Acting is dressing up. Do they think Laurence Olivier was Danish because he played Hamlet?" And, incidentally, Humphries does not consider Dame Edna a drag act. Oh, Humphries has praised drag for its long-standing theatrical tradition, but he considers Edna to be more of an embodiment of a character. Dame Edna may not be a drag act, but her outrageous, flashy costumes defy anything the male—or female—gender would ever have the courage to wear, especially her bizarre collection of glasses ( she has close to 100 at last count ) , which she cheekily refers to as her "face furniture."
Humphries has said he is somewhat shocked by the success of this American tour. For several years, he was warned not to bring Dame Edna to the States because Americans' sense of humor was thought to be less sophisticated than that of European audiences.
But judging by the sold-out shows across the country as well as the tour's numerous awards, Americans are more than ready to be ( gently ) slapped by the Dame's velvet glove. "What's happening onstage isn't so much a proper show as a conversation between two people. One that is much more interesting than the other," explains Dame Edna to every audience of the Royal Tour. "I wouldn't pay to see YOU!"
