The Melbourne international comedy festival has denied “cancelling” the late Barry Humphries and says it will plan a “fitting tribute” to the internationally lauded satirist and comedian who was instrumental in setting up the festival almost four decades ago.
Humphries died in Sydney on Saturday, at the age of 89. The man behind Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson has been widely remembered as a comic genius, while some have been critical of comments he made about transgender people, including that gender-affirmation surgery was “self-mutilation” and being transgender “a fashion”.
In 2019, Humphries’ name was stripped from MICF’s main award, the Barry award, after 19 years, with organisers saying at the time his comments were “not helpful”.
At a press conference on Sunday to mark the closing weekend of the month-long festival, MICF said no official tribute to Humphries was planned, though a spokesperson for the festival later said, “We don’t have control over how individual artists tribute Barry Humphries.”
On Sunday, actor and Humphries’ friend Miriam Margolyes told the ABC that he had been “very hurt and saddened by what happened after the Melbourne festival” and she believed MICF had “cancelled him rather late in life”.
Film director and friend Bruce Beresford said the decision to remove Humphries’ name from the award was “a disgrace”.
“I mean he’s one of the great comic geniuses … how can you take his name off an award like that? How offensive, how insulting,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne, adding: “It was a point of view. I don’t think it was malevolent or malicious.”
The MICF director, Susan Provan, said the festival never cancelled Humphries, calling him “an incredible artist and provocateur”, but added: “Many in our industry were baffled by [his] comments that lacked empathy … We can celebrate Barry’s artistic genius while not much liking some of his views.”
Provan said Humphries’ views on transgender people “did not reflect the values of our community” and that the award was “renamed to reinforce the equality and diversity that our festival community has always championed”.
But late on Monday evening, MICF issued a statement on Twitter to say it is now planning to play tribute to Humphries in some capacity.
“The news of Barry Humphries’ passing in the last 24 hours of the ’23 Fest was momentous,” the statement read. “From today we re-group and start to plan a fitting tribute to his comic genius and leading role in creating a global platform for Australian comedy.”
Both Humphries’ supporters and critics responded to the statement with fury, among them Piers Morgan, who tweeted: “You gutless cowards cancelled him for standing up for women’s rights. You don’t get to un-cancel now he’s dead.”
Provan said the festival would consult with comedians about the nature of the tribute.
“He passed 24 hours before the last show. We had over 300 shows that needed to be put on yesterday. So it’s been pretty frantic,” she said.
Margolyes told the ABC she did not share some of Humphries’ views, something she said she made clear to him.
“I didn’t like his politics. I really didn’t. But I revere the talent of the man,” Margolyes said. “It was coruscating, it was all-enveloping. And if people can’t see that, they need something shoved up their bum.”
Victoria’s creative industries minister, Steve Dimopoulos, is currently in talks with Humphries’ family on an appropriate way to mark the artist’s passing, with a state funeral being one of the options on the table.
