Dame Edna, the International “Gigastar” (upgraded from “Megastar”) from Moonee Ponds, Australia brought her fantastic show to San Diego’s Civic Theatre for the week of June 2nd through the 7th. I, along with a couple of friends, caught the performance earlier tonight. Dame Edna’s brand of comedy usually stems from the random selection of various audience members usually in the first couple of rows and interrogating them, or pretty much picking on them. And tonight San Diego proved to be a goldmine at the expense of the individuals selected to spark the comedy of the show.

One woman in particular, Beverly, seemed to bear the brunt of the bitchy humor, from the delightfully comedic answers she gave in response to Dame Edna’s line of inquiry. It started with her description of her home as being an “ethnic” home in Carlsbad, to which Dame Edna inquired if that was like a shopping cart. When asked what the home is made of, Dame Edna had a field day out the response which was bricks and tiles and the home is on stilts. Dame Edna first wanted to know if the stilts were to keep the vermin away and then wanted to know if Beverly’s home was a tourist attraction. It was a riot witnessing a comedy legend at work with such interesting and out of left field answers.

A few others in the audience were picked on throughout the evening, but Beverly proved to be the most entertaining of the bunch. At one point in the show, Dame Edna had a couch and a chair brought out to resemble a talk show stage and under the premise that the evening was being filmed for an HBO pilot, Dame Edna invited the people she picked on during the evening up on stage to be interviewed. She even had Carolyn, another woman she chose to pick on during the evening, sing a song to the audience proclaiming it to be a Susan Boyle moment.

I especially liked the suggestion that vacations such as cruises for senior citizens are a complete waste of future inheritance money. Dame Edna’s suggestion is that all you need to do to fool a senior citizen into thinking they had a vacation is to get a sunlamp and a bucket of sand and some random photographs of people on the beach. When the senior citizen falls asleep, crank up the sunlamp so they get a little bit of a tan, use the sand to fill in the various crevices on the senior citizen’s body, and then place the random photos in their hand. Then when the senior citizen wakes up you tell them it’s wonderful to have them home again from their trip and say they look rested and got a lot of sun. When they see they’re gotten a tan and have sand in their crevices they’ll think they had some sun. And if they ask why they aren’t in any of the pictures left in their hand, you just tell them it’s because they took the photos. So mean and vicious, but incredibly funny.

Some of the routines presented in the show seemed to be recycled from past shows, as the line of questioning about homes is something Dame Edna always does. Some of the jokes were the same such as stating the audience has aged, the audience looks like a garden of flowers (with the occasional cactus), and bits about George W. Bush getting an Atlas from Dame Edna as a gift, and being unable to find “Overseas” and “Abroad” in the index. Dame Edna also sang a couple of songs, including an updated version of “Friends of Kenny.”

Some of the new material was opening the show with a Hollywood Expose type video that showcased Edna as a bad mother and neglectful wife. The film showcased lots of photos from the early days of Dame Edna’s career along with some interview footage of Barry Humphries (the man who plays Dame Edna) and presenting him as if he was Edna’s manager instead of the person who plays Edna. For a fictional character, Dame Edna has an elaborate backstory of humble beginnings as a housewife from the Melbourne, Australia suburb of Moonee Ponds, marriage to Norm Everage, several children, with attention mostly being applied to daughter, Valmai, and son, Kenny. For the show, Dame Edna brought along “Valmai” as part of a bring your daughter to work thing, and as Dame Edna’s most disfuntional child, Valmai (portrayed by Erin-Kate Whitcomb) is dressed in a jail orange jumpsuit complete with ankle alarms on both ankles (as Edna says so that they can determine at any given moment exactly how far apart Valmai’s legs are). Kenny, of course, is Edna’s favorite child, Kenny is a stereotypical gay man, but Edna never says so at any point, just pointing out all the stereotypical things about Kenny’s various careers that make it pretty obvious, even to the point that Kenny is the alleged designer of all Edna’s fancy dresses.

Along for the ride is Dame Edna’s musical director Andrew Ross who serves to help out when it comes to Edna’s songs in the show. All in all, a fun and memorable show. I enjoyed getting the chance to see Dame Edna again. The last time being three years ago. As an interesting ending to the show, Dame Edna asks the audience to stay put, runs off stage, when a video screen comes down to allegedly show what’s going on backstage, where Edna asks to have a specific woman removed from the house, and then goes into the dressing room only to be locked in by a mystery man who then proceeds to walk out on the stage, only to see it’s Barry Humphries himself, in coat and tie to take a final bow as himself.

It was an honor to give him a standing ovation for his performance as Edna. I’m not sure if everyone in the audience got it, but that was a different ending. Perhaps there’s a little more truth to the name of the tour “My First Last Tour” being the last tour. In any case, I hope that’s not the case as I would love to see Dame Edna again sometime. I love that kind of viciously bitchy comedy.

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