It’s Tuesday, it must be Ednaburgh!

Dame Edna to make PA at Festival Theatre

Dame Edna waves goodbye in her fairwell tour: Eat Pray Laugh!

By Thom Dibdin

Australia’s most famous export, that’s Dame Edna Everage possums, is to make a personal appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on Tuesday 26 March.

Theatre bosses are being tight lipped over the reason for the appearance of Ms Everage, saying only that it is “for a private event ahead of her November dates at the Festival Theatre.”

It is expected that Dame Edna will be arriving between 12.20 and 12.45pm, for a red carpet walk.

The theatre is hoping to generate something of a splash for the glitzy antipodean “housewife superstar”, and is asking her adoring fans to arrive with suitable banners to welcome her to Edinburgh. There will no doubt be cameras involved.

According to a spokesman for the theatre: “We’ll be giving 2 tickets for her stage show to the most Edna-esque banner. And looking at what our Deputy Box Office Manager has already produced, there’s stiff competition!”

“Stiff competition”

As previously reported in the Annals, 78 year-old Barry Humphries is to retire Dame Edna, who is his most famous alter-ego, from touring in 2014.

Humphries is currently on a world tour of Eat Pray Laugh! which started with a sell-out run across Australia and New Zealand. The show sees the return of Humphries’ other alter egos: the gentle, grandfatherly Sandy Stone and the inebriated cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson.

However, the evening will be dominated with a second half appearance from Dame Edna. In the midst of spectacular sets and surrounded by dancers she will meditate on the big issues of gender, ethnicity and climate change.

Suitably for the superstar who began life as Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, Australia – and first appeared on stage in Melbourne in 1955 as Mrs Norm Everage, a drab, purple-rinsed housewife satirising Australian suburbia – the UK leg of Dame Edna’s tour kicks off in Milton Keynes.

Eat Pray Laugh! will then visit Cardiff before playing the Edinburgh Festival Theatre from Tuesday 5th to Saturday 9th November. Dame Edna is set to play the Christmas season in London, with details yet to be announced, before returning to the touring circuit in January.

Details have been announced for a seven date regional tour of Eat Pray Laugh! in 2014 starting in Newcastle on 21 January, touring to Southampton, Norwich, Glasgow, Bristol and Leeds before winding up in Manchester with a final night on Saturday 8 March.

Tickets for the Edinburgh Festival Theatre dates are on sale at: www.edtheatres.com

2013 Tour of Eat Pray Laugh!:

2014 Tour of Eat Pray Laugh!:

* On-sale 27 March
** On-sale 5 Sept

ENDS

Tags: Comedy, Dame Edna, Dame Edna Everage, Edinburgh, Festival Theatre, News