At 88, with almost seven decades of character comedy behind him, “the one character I’ve never fully explored is myself,” says Barry Humphries. With his new touring show, he makes a “stumbling attempt” to do so. The Man Behind the Mask doesn’t dig deeply under the skin of the creator of Dame Edna Everage and the sozzled Les Patterson, both of whom cameo in the show. Nor does it greatly deviate from the template for national-treasure celebs cosily recounting their life stories on stage. One might have wished for more iconoclasm from this great professional gadfly. But at the tail end of an extraordinary career, which spanned several eras and co-starred everyone who’s anyone in 20th century entertainment, who would deny Humphries a bask in nostalgia’s fireside glow?
The impish spirit is still in evidence: Humphries is ever-ready to send up his self-indulgence with a cutting quip, as when he promises us another farewell show next year. In the meantime, this one offers us a slideshow of Humphries’ colonial youth: the architectural styles of 1930s Melbourne; his experiences of bullying and being bullied; and his early stage roles in Shakespeare and Noël Coward. The anecdotes feel arbitrary and are sometimes underpowered. But Humphries is jolly about the meandering nature of proceedings, reassuring his audience with a twinkle that “I wouldn’t insult you with a rehearsed show!”
