Barry Humphries: The Man Behind the Mask
Les Patterson was an ungracious slob, and while Edna softened in her dotage, it’s worth remembering how she longed to turn Norm’s life support off. Both revealed a cruel streak that ran through Humphries work, perhaps born of the days when he was the bully, not the bullied
Theatre Royal
The evening started with Humphries’s pianist dusting and vacuuming the stage, the piano, the framed video screen, the autocue monitors and even the gladioli. A moment of light hearted whimsy, it confused, but also implicitly informed the expectant audience. This show was going to be a bit of harmless fun – not something to take too seriously.
Barry Humphries appeared soon after, moving at a stately pace and looking alarmingly like Les Patterson, but still pleasingly impish, for all his eighty-eight years. We were earnestly informed that we were about to learn more about the man, and less about the characters that have served him so well over the last seventy years, but as teasers go, this was something close to a fib. What we actually got was a cosy run through of his early life in Melbourne, his doomed theatrical career, and his rise to stardom dressed as a woman. Fortunately, Humphries is such an accomplished speaker, and such a charming, avuncular fellow, that spending a couple of hours in his company was nothing short of a delight, notwithstanding his lack of candour.
In fairness, the night kicked off with a surprisingly comprehensive checklist of his formative years. We learned of his colonial childhood, his bullying at school, his father’s architectural skills, his early years in Shakespearian tights, and his epiphany that his future lay in comedy, not tragedy. There were digressions aplenty, but despite claims that this was due to lack of rehearsal, his furtive glances at his prompt suggested otherwise. We should have known better that to think this old pro wouldn’t have the evening nailed down. The anecdotes didn’t always hit home, but were delivered with such style, it didn’t really matter.
We were over an hour into the evening before Edna cropped up via a pair of glasses, retrieved from the top of the piano. There was something very disconcerting about her spirit joining the stage – her voice emerging from Humphries in his civvies. Such is the skill with which he created this rounded character I’m not sure I wanted to see her revealed as just a voice and a pair of specs – it was if she was (shudder to think it) naked on stage. Thankfully, this shocking vignette was smothered by clips of old interviews and talk shows. Ancient those these clips now look – imagine the unearthing of Etruscan artefacts – they were also spookily familiar. A sober reminder of the years that have passed, for both Humphries and his audience.
I enjoyed them – how could I not – and perhaps Humphries needed a breather anyway. He had been going for close to two hours now, after all. I still felt a little cheated by them, however. Without us noticing, he had deftly and discreetly put the mask back on. He did let it slip again, when talking lovingly about Emily Perry, the actress that played the long suffering Madge Alsop in Edna’s talk shows. It slipped further when discussing his alcoholism, at which point the show was at its most compelling. I just wish there had been more of this, as advertised, and less of the clips that are ready and waiting on youtube when the mood takes me.
Nonetheless, what he did reveal – almost unwittingly – is what a kind, gentle man he is. Les Patterson was an ungracious slob, and while Edna softened in her dotage, it’s worth remembering how she longed to turn Norm’s life support off. Both revealed a cruel streak that ran through Humphries work, perhaps born of the days when he was the bully, not the bullied. What we saw at the Theatre Royal was a man that had lived a life and come through it, a man that once collapsed in Saville Row, unaccustomed to the alien emotion coursing through him, that turned out to be simple happiness. As he flung gladioli out into the audience, he bemoaned how he never knew quite how to close a show. The audience solved that quandary for him, with a standing ovation that was as much about affection as appreciation.
