Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries performs fully submerged in character, demanding the room treat the fiction as fact. As Dame Edna Everage, he stands at the lip of the stage in rhinestone glasses, scanning the stalls for a target. He speaks in a piercing, sing-song voice built entirely out of condescension. He spots a woman’s blouse, asks where she bought it with a look of tragic pity, and waits in the quiet while the ticket buyer realizes they are trapped. As Sir Les Patterson, he staggers to the microphone in a stained shirt, spraying spit onto the front row while adjusting his trousers to lecture on diplomacy.

He built the model for massive, theatrical character comedy, taking these acts to Broadway and the West End and turning formal rooms into hostile territory. He proved a theater audience will gladly pay to be insulted as long as the person holding the microphone never drops the act.

The show runs on his refusal to break. He never winks to let the crowd off the hook. Edna’s interactions rely on weaponized pity. She will mourn the terrible home decor of the people watching her, or hurl gladioli at the stalls and command the audience to fight for the flowers. Sir Les leans on pure physical revulsion, delivering sharp political satire while picking his teeth. The characters take up so much space that the actual comedian completely disappears.

Humphries developed Edna in the 1950s as a quiet parody of a Melbourne housewife, spending the next six decades turning her into a tyrant.