Dame Edna Everage breathlessly – sometimes worryingly so – entertained an apprehensive but appreciative audience eager to see her “Back With a Vengeance!” vehicle that opened Tuesday at the Buell Theater.
Festooned in spangles from the tip of her signature rococo eyeglasses to her elegantly shod toe, the Dame delivered on her opening musical promise, “It’s All About You!”
As her longtime followers know too well, Dame Edna interprets that as license to freely dispense brutally frank assessments – like Dr. Laura, but with more glitter and less overt malice.
“These old eyes don’t miss much!” Dame Edna assured the audience. It was a reminder that Mrs. Edna Everage dates back to 1955, when Australian actor Barry Humphries introduced his send-up of subtopian housewives.
The Dame – a title she genuinely holds – may be 50 on paper. But under that makeup is someone past 70, knowledge that adds a disconcerting frisson whenever Dame Edna struggled to catch her breath during a performance in this mile-high venue.
Throughout the show, Dame Edna chooses unwitting recipients for her caring advice. Conducting very public interviews from the stage, Dame Edna elicits the names, occupations and housing architecture from the “little Denver mites” she targets.
“I don’t pick on people; I empower them,” she asserted, shortly before seizing on a woman from Commerce City.
“What a romantic name!” purred Dame Edna.
“There ARE lovely homes in Commerce City, aren’t there? Do you live near one of them?”
The people paying a premium for seats in the first three rows, from which Dame Edna drew her prey, either congratulated themselves on their foresight or wished heartily they were up in the cheap seats. Dame Edna periodically acknowledged that outlying audience – “My paupers,” she said, then found a more suitable nickname – “My little Mizzies,” a diminutive of “Les Miserables.”
Perhaps a tad oxygen-deprived during the first half of the show, Dame Edna came into her own following the “Pause for Reflection” she substitutes for the conventional intermission.
Gallivanting onto the stage in a different frock that outshone its first-act predecessor, she vamped through “Back With a Vengeance” with a forcefulness that alarmed the front-row patrons. Seizing upon an obviously married couple, Dame Edna inflicted an on-stage counseling session upon them, warmly predicting both a quarrel and an impassioned climax before they closed their eyes that night.
Appropriating audience members into a show is a potentially perilous form of improvisation, with the possibility of something going awry. Dame Edna’s impeccable timing – Humphries is a comic genius – and alarmingly quick wit turns theatrical broken eggs into sublime meringues.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com
Dame Edna
COMEDY|Buell Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets; through Jan. 29; 8 p.m., Tuesdays Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m., Saturdays; 2 p.m., Sundays|$25-$60|denvercenter.org, 303-893-1400, or ticketswest.com or 866-464-2626 or 800-641-1222
