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Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance

Dame Edna may be unfamiliar to many people in the Buffalo entertainment market, but her visit to Shea’s is an historic event. Created by performer Barry Humphries in the 1950s, Dame Edna began as an Australian housewife who annihilated right-wing causes by supporting them. Over the years, she has grown in size and ambition, becoming a Dame and an international superstar in her own right. Indeed, the character is now more famous than her creator. Critic John Lahr, himself the son of great comic performer Bert Lahr, has described Barry Humphries as the greatest living clown in the world. In his biography of Humphries, Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation: Backstage With Barry Humphries, Lahr describes Humphries’ unique talent and his extraordinary career, in which his character took on a life of her own, as if she were a real person. In interviews, Humphries is either himself or Edna, but will never break character, admitting to being one while embodying the other. To see Barry Humphries in person, in Buffalo, is a rare privilege, and perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance, plays through Sunday.

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