Australian comedian Barry Humphries, creator of Dame Edna, dead at 89 – National | 24CA News
Tony Award-winning comic Barry Humphries, internationally famend for his garish stage persona Dame Edna Everage, a condescending and imperfectly-veiled snob whose evolving character has delighted audiences over seven many years, has died. He was 89.
His demise was confirmed Saturday by the Sydney hospital the place he spent a number of days with problems following hip surgical procedure.
Humphries had lived in London for many years and returned to native Australia in December for Christmas.
He informed The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper final month that his physiotherapy had been “agony” following his fall and hip alternative.
“It was the most ridiculous thing, like all domestic incidents are. I was reaching for a book, my foot got caught on a rug or something, and down I went,” Humphries mentioned of his fall.
Humphries has remained an lively entertainer, touring Britain final yr along with his one-man present “The Man Behind the Mask.”
The character of Dame Edna started as a dowdy Mrs. Norm Everage, who first took to the stage in Humphries’ hometown of Melbourne within the mid-Fifties. She mirrored a postwar suburban inertia and cultural blandness that Humphries discovered stifling.
Edna is one in every of Humphries’ a number of enduring characters. The subsequent most well-known is Sir Les Patterson, an ever-drunk, matted and lecherous Australian cultural attache.
Patterson mirrored a notion of Australia as a Western cultural wasteland that drove Humphries together with many main Australian intellectuals to London.
Humphries, a regulation college dropout, discovered main success as an actor, author and entertainer in Britain within the Nineteen Seventies, however the United States was an ambition that he discovered stubbornly elusive.
A excessive level within the United States was a Tony Award in 2000 for his Broadway present “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid tribute to the celebrated comic.
“For 89 years, Barry Humphries entertained us through a galaxy of personas, from Dame Edna to Sandy Stone,” Albanese tweeted, referring to the aged Stone, one in every of Humphries most enduring characters. “But the brightest star in that galaxy was always Barry. A great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind, he was both gifted and a gift.”
British comic Ricky Gervais tweeted: “Farewell, Barry Humphries, you comedy genius.”
Piers Morgan, British tv persona, additionally paid tribute. “One of the funniest people I’ve ever met,” Morgan tweeted.
“A wondrously intelligent, entertaining, daring, provocative, mischievous comedy Genius,” Morgan added.
Married 4 instances, he’s survived by his spouse Lizzie Spender and 4 youngsters.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
