This is goodbye. Really. So long, possums, and it's been grand.
"I cannot do the shameful thing and announce a final show and then appear again," said Barry Humphries, who turned 81 last month. "Barbra Streisand can do it, but I am not that shameless."
With Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour arriving at the Orpheum Theatre on March 17 for seven performances, Humphries will bid adieu to the city he considers his imperious alter ego's spiritual American home. "I always give credit to San Francisco for first embracing me in America, because I was nervous about American audiences after a show I did in New York in the late 1970s was killed by this terrible critic at The New York Times ."
Humphries fared much better in his native Australia and in Britain, which got the humor of his impersonation of an Australian housewife who has elevated herself into a mauve-haired, sequin-gowned, insult-spewing gigastar. Caution, however, is needed when describing this act. "Remember, Edna is a real person," Humphries said during a phone interview. "She's gone beyond being an impersonation. There were a few ignorant people who called me a cross-dressing comedian. What I do is acting, and actors disguise themselves as other people. I guess I rather resented that label."
Labels and America aside, Humphries' career was going swimmingly on stage and especially on television when the elaborate, expensive musical Edna: the Spectacle flopped in London's West End in 1998. "It was too elaborate, with a cast of thousands, and it was all superfluous in a way. Who needs a ship in a storm with convicts? Listen, you can do a good show by standing in front of a curtain."
Audiences at that show, however, did learn the roots of Edna's affinity for gladiolas, which she slings into the audience for a group waving of the flowers at the end of every show. The unsuccessful show opened with a little flower girl in 18th-century London who is arrested for stealing gladiolas and is packed off to a penal colony in Australia. She is revealed to be the great-great-great-great grandmother of Edna Everage.
Smarting from the ignoble end of Edna: The Spectacle, Humphries turned to Joan Rivers for advice. "I had been a guest on her TV show several times even though I didn't have any profile in America at all," Humphries said, "and she had been on Dame Edna's television show in London, which, if I may be so bold as to say, was a mold-breaking, cutting-edge interview show, and the format has been copied by a few other British talk-show hosts. No acknowledgment, but if you are an innovator that's what you must expect."
Rivers' advice to Humphries was to introduce Dame Edna once again to the United States, but this time in San Francisco rather than New York. She connected him to agents who could facilitate a booking at Theatre on the Square (now home to San Francisco Playhouse), and a two-week engagement of The Royal Tour was extended to four months. Humphries was able to return triumphantly to New York in 1999, and even won a special Tony Award. "I dedicate anything I do in America to Joan," he said.
Humphries has been back to San Francisco twice since then, most recently in 2008. And he has developed quite a coterie of friends here, and he lets drop the names of Denise Hale, Amy Tan, Michael Tilson Thomas, Armistead Maupin, Danielle Steel, Ann Getty, and the Crockers. "If I lived any place other than Australia and London, I would have a place in San Francisco," he said. "They even still have bookstores there, very good ones."
Humphries sees Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye as something of a retrospective. "Of course, there are familiar things," he said, "but in this kind of show, things change during the performance because there is quite a margin for improvisation and the audience is so much a part of the show that they become invisible characters."
When Edna zeroes in on audience members in their seats or pulls a few on stage for a sketch, unpredictability is a given. "That gives energy, a tension to the show. It has to work even if it fails. Are you a motorist? Well, you know you should always drive a car into the skid."
While Dame Edna is known for her over-the-top aesthetic, Humphries himself presents himself as something of a dandy in the wardrobe department. "It's true. I like clothes, and I like dressing up," he said. "I think it probably all started at my parents' house in a suburb of Melbourne where they had a large steamer trunk filled with costumes. My sister and I would put on shows for the uncles and aunts. Little did I know I would have a job later in life dressing up."
There will be less of that after his current tour ends in April. Television appearances are likely, but he says he is simply worn out as a traveling minstrel. Once he is on stage, the energy is in place. "I'm actually quite agile," Humphries said. "I have yet to do a show in a wheelchair or with a seeing-eye dog."
Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour will run March 17-22 at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are $40-$210. Call (888) 746-1799 or go to shnsf.com.