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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour
One performance by Dame Edna is much like another: the elaborately beaded and bejeweled gowns, the rhinestone-trimmed glasses with curlicues at the corners, the flinging of gladioli, and most notoriously the interplay with the audience. This installment presents the nobly condescending superstar on a voyage of self-discovery, sharing the lessons of inner peace she has learned. (The brief version: "Eat, pray, laugh.") Assisted by unflappable pianist Jonathan Tessero and indomitable dancers Ralph Coppola, Brooke Pascoe, Eve Prideaux, and Armando Yearwood Jr., Dame Edna defines her performance as "a lovely conversation between two people, one of whom is a lot more interesting than the other." She needles the audience for their informal attire on an opening night ("How nice that you just got here from work"), zaps the people in the balcony as "mizzies" (a diminutive version of "les misérables," which she considers a more polite term than her usual "paupers"), and refers to a front theater box as an "ashtray." Over two and a half hours, Dame Edna seeks out several audience members in the front rows for special treatment, whether comparing her home to theirs or doing a bit of off-the-cuff matchmaking, and tells stories about everyone from her dear personal friend the Dalai Lama to her deceased husband Norm. As she is a woman of a certain age (Humphries is 81), she takes breaks while the audience watches video of her with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, with Joan Rivers ... with Osama bin Laden? And, showing a bit of humility, she steps back to let a surprise guest bring down the curtain. The National Theatre |
