Douglas McEwan is a friend of Barry Humphries and has this to say about the reports I cited about Barry touring for the last time as Dame Edna Everage…
Barry's retirement from the stage is no joke. The "First Last Tour" title was a joke; this isn't. Part of the misunderstanding (apart form the basic cynicism that no longer believes it when celebrities announce retirements) arises from people incorrectly stating that Barry is retiring. He's not. He's just retiring from live stage shows and touring.
He's going to do one last Australian tour this summer. It's all booked. If it's successful (and how could it not be?) he will bring it to London and then to Broadway, where, not lumbered this time with the creepy Michael Feinstein, he should again receive the welcome he deserves, especially as that will be the final engagement in an amazing 57 year stage career of astounding international success. For we in Los Angeles, The First Last Tour was indeed his final appearance on our local stages. Even if I have to sell my signed first editions to finance it, I will be there for that last engagement.
And then, that's it. No more live stage shows, no more tours, ever. Bear in mind that by the time he closes that show on Broadway, he'll be 79 years old, or "80-1". Touring is arduous and grueling hard work, even if you're just a 25 year old member of the chorus of a show. Barry is the whole show. I have no idea how he has found the stamina, energy, and strength to do it as long as he did.
But Barry is not fully retiring. He won't be off keeping bees on the Sussex Downs. He will go on writing books, and doing TV appearances. (Though a new TV series from him is highly doubtful.) He has said that Sandy Stone and Sir Les Patterson will not be heard from again after this tour. (Not that those characters have ever played our L.A. stages, though I begged him more than once to bring a show here that included them.), but that Dame Edna will live on in TV guest appearances. And he will still be painting. Lots of painting. Given what his paintings sell for, that's not a hobby, it's another line of his professional activities.
It's a sad thing, but we need to face reality, as he finally has. A man of 80 can not sing and dance and tell jokes on stage night after night after night, and then pack up and move on to the next town and do it all again, not to mention the ancillary publicity work: TV appearances, radio appearances, interviews, events, for month after month.
I'll miss him terribly, but he has earned his rest, and some time to savor what life he has left without arduous touring. Not every actor wants to pull a David Burns, and die onstage. Touring a Dame Edna show at 80 would do just that.
Yeah, I do have a natural cynicism when performers "retire" — and at least 85% of the time I'm right that they won't keep away from the stage or spotlight. But it's encouraging that he's only planning to retire from touring, not from performing at all. That, I could believe.
I hope some outfit like HBO or Showtime will record his current show and then I'd like to see them hire Mr. Humphries to do a special or two per year. He needs not just a live audience but the kind of live audience that would turn out to see a Dame Edna show, and he needs time. I was never that impressed when he'd come on and do eight minutes with Leno. Some performers simply don't work on someone else's turf and with time constraints. (Sam Kinison was another. Given 6-10 minutes on a show that wasn't his, I thought he was a bore. But give him 40+ on a stage he could make his own and he was brilliant.)
Sorry to hear that Ms. Everage won't be coming to L.A. on this final final tour. I'd like to think you're wrong about that but you probably aren't. Oh, well. I'm way overdue for a trip back to New York and a week of showgoing.