BROADWAY SNAP-SHOT
by Russell Bouthiller

Dateline: 25 November 2004

DAME EDNA: BACK WITH A VENGEANCE!

Dame Edna Everage, Master of the Dame's Musick (sic), The Gorgeous Endaettes and The Equally Gorgeous TestEdnarones. A spectacular assemblage of talent in what amounts to a one-man show. Excuse me, a one-woman show; written, directed and performed by the comic mastermind, Barry Humphries. After a five year absence from the Broadway stage, Dame Edna is "Back With a Vengeance."

Sure, there are slinky dancing girls and agile chorus boys spicing up the atmosphere. And, once again, she is accompanied by the piano-ticklings of the handsome Wayne Barker. But, essentially, Dame Edna Everage stands on stage alone, blotting out every light around her with the simplest flicker of her celebrity. She is not just your run-of-the-mill mega-star. She is a self-proclaimed, glittering Giga-star.

And, how—one might ask oneself, sitting in one's cheerless Hicksville living room—does she do it? For starters, she descends from the Heavens perched on a Goliath-sized pair of jewel-spangled spectacles (just one of her many trademarks). In true celebrity fashion, she flounces around in shimmering frocks, elegantly crafted by Will Goodwin and Stephen Adnitt. And, most important, she berates her audience into a sadomasochistic state of idol worship.

Honing in on her prey like the vultures on her Playbill cover, Dame Edna hunts for unsuspecting victims among her adoring public. On the day I saw the show, the first to be plucked from obscurity was a woman who had the impertinence to be reading through her Playbill in the presence of Greatness. You can imagine the meat the ol' dame picked off these bones.

That was just one of the many seemingly unscripted moments of DAME EDNA: BACK WITH A VENGEANCE! And, it's these semi-spontaneous instances that make up a great part of her noble genius. Humphries has the uncanny knack of killer comic opportunism, catching some poor soul in the act of being human.

And, what makes the scripted bits so much fun is the way Dame Edna makes it feel so unrehearsed. It all seems to just tumble out from beneath her shockingly mauve wig. In the second act of DAME EDNA: BACK WITH A VENGEANCE, she drags up all those poor souls she picked on during the first act and has them act out a scene from her life story, "The Girl From Oz." What could more hysterical than an unsuspecting Upper Eastside matron rolling off dialogue about a kinky sex life?

DAME EDNA: BACK WITH A VENGEANCE does weave in some of the bits we saw in her first Broadway foray, such as referring to the folks in the balcony as paupers. And, what would a Dame Edna show be without gladioli being hurled into the audience? But, these routines worked then and they certainly work now. Dame Edna is not just back on Broadway. Dame Edna is Broadway.