Review: BARRY HUMPHRIES - THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK, Richmond Theatre

What, then, is the mask? The signature spectacles of the spectacularly vituperative Dame Edna Everage? The comedy teeth of the gloriously non-PC Sir Les Patterson, Cultural Attaché to the Court of St James's? Or the familiar hat, scarf and overcoat that all but obscures the man himself on the (excellent) programme's front cover.

Though he qualifies, Barry Humphries has never been comfortable cast as the public intellectual (not in the same way that his fellow countrymen, Clive James, Robert Hughes and Germaine Greer, who share a Bill Leak cartoon reproduced from The Australian have been) and we never quite get to that man, Humphries tellingly throwing in a line about his Aussie-derived egalitarian tendencies early in proceedings.

Nor are we treated to the kind of score-settling typical of a showbiz autobiography, nor much about the three divorces and merely a passing, poignant mention of his alcoholism - it's not that kind of show. But we do get enough of the entertainer for the evening to zip by, not least because, well into his late-80s, he can still tell a tale, time a joke and present just enough of a threat to the punters in the front row.

The anecdotes are helped by photos and videos of a life well lived and Humphries' command of language, harnessing control of its rhythms and finding colourful metaphors and similes of which even PG Wodehouse would be proud. The rollercoaster ride that Dame Edna and Sir Les would give us - the fear that comes of teetering on the edge of the next sentence "What are they going to say next?" - is replaced by a more relaxed approach, reflective and warm, but all springing from that same well of talent and control.

We hear of a happy middle-class childhood, Melbourne rather than the Sydney of James' Unreliable Memoirs, of a supportive mother and a more distant father. Even then, stories reveal the teeth he would bare later as a satirist and pricker of celebrity egos. There are the successes and failures on the stage - again, more of the disasters than triumphs, so a long story of forgetting his lines in a Coward play and a skating over his playing Fagin in the West End. And a suggestion of the paradox faced by so many Australians of his generation - that, in the vast land, they felt claustrophobic, hemmed in by the suburbs and their ersatz British ways.

Dame Edna and Sir Les get their origin stories and we hear repeatedly of the comedian's necessary contempt for their audience, again with just enough in the present tense to leaven the schmaltz with enough spice to sting. There's clips of Dame Edna skewering a younger Donald Trump and a younger still Boris Johnson (and a shocked intake of breath in the house when the camera pans across the sofa to Shane Warne, spiky of hair, full of life). An uneasy Michael Parkinson is often the interlocutor, another adopted Anglo-Australian, well aware of his being repeatedly taken to the top of that rollercoaster ride.

And then it's gladioli time, flowers tossed to the front row and we're done. There's more, much more to his long life, but there are the biographies for that. Nevertheless, (in a rare anecdote that puffs himself up) we are left in complete agreement with an Aussie biker who assailed Humphries in the street, our man cringing from as usual from encounters with the public until the biker exclaimed, "Barry! You're a f*ckin' icon mate".

Barry Humphries - The Man Behind The Mask is on tour in the UK

Photo Guy Chapman

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