The Dame Edna Experience - The Complete Series 1

The first DVD (a touch over three hours), which has the introduction and four episodes of "The Dame Edna Experience" is very funny. The guests she has were big in their own time: Jane Seymour, Nana Moskouri, Larry Hagman, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charlton Heston and a few folks that I didn't know, since I'm from the States. None the less, I found myself laughing and pausing/rewinding to watch again. The antics are well planned and there's a bit of a shock value that can't be duplicated. This is what makes it uniquely refreshing, BUT, this is not the Dame Edna of the late 90s and early 2000s. She has come a long way in polishing her wit and delivery...hence the four star rating.

The second DVD (a touch over 80 minutes), houses the specials, her song "Niceness" and interviews. I LOVED the second DVD, eventhough it was shorter. It gives you a better sense of who Edna (Barry Humpries) is and what she's about.

I remember seeing Dame Edna for the first time on Ally McBeal. I've been a fan ever since. Go Dame, Go!! I can't wait for Series Two!!


Dame Edna Is Much Too Funny   May 7, 2004
 8 out of 9 found this review helpful

I have to preface this by saying the obvious....eveyone has a different sense of humor. I love what I like to think of as brainy humor...slapstick isn't my thing. Love Woody Allen, hate Jerry Lewis. That said, The tounge-in-cheek humor of Dame Edna consistantly makes me laugh. It's just too funny. Friends of mine don't get it, but that seems to be normal with comedy. Everyone finds different things funny.

I'm so excited to see this collection out on DVD....it really is long overdue. You have to see Edna carve up her guests with the most bizzare and hillarious interviews....and watch the guests struggling to figure out if its all for real. And of course, there's Madge! The whole thing is totally nuts, and the best TV show I've ever watched. If you've never seen Dame Edna, you must give this a shot & see what you think. You might just get hooked on Dame Edna Everidge!


Outrageous hilarity!   April 29, 2004
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Hello Possums!

Dame Edna's talk show, which she explains is actually a monologue interrupted by total strangers, must be seen to be believed. Not for the faint of heart (she can find a double-entendre hiding inside of silence), her guests are sent up without mercy by this genius of the stage. They range from a ?terrified? Sean Connery to Joan Rivers to Larry Hagman to Germaine Greer (an old school chum, actually) on an all-girls night, to former Ministers (including Prime), all of whom struggle to keep up with Dame Edna's wit and energy (you will hang on to your chair for dear life when she begins to dance), and manage to laugh at their own failure to do so--I have yet to see someone manage to hold their own when face to face with her. With a crack research staff, she manages to know and confront her guests with what they seemed to have thought were secrets from dim memory--if you've ever caught her on Jay Leno's show, you'll have seen the deer caught in the headlights look her guests end up wearing as she drops some piquant morsel "just between us," on national television, lovingly says the most appalling things to her "celebrity guests," all in the name of "caring and sharing" with her "adoring public." I guarantee that you'll be laughing so hard it hurts, especially when she uses her state-of-the-art technology to abort interviews in astonishingly final ways.

To understand the genuine genius behind this character, read John Lahr's book, "Dame Edna and the Rise of Western Civilization" and you will be impressed by the thought and purpose of Barry Humphries work in the creation of Dame Edna. Frequently mis-labeled a ?transvestite? and rather strangely slotted into ?[...]-themed? entertainment in this country, while adored in Britain by all sorts (I once had an hour-long discussion with one of the Beef-Eaters at the Tower of London about which interview was the funniest), Dame Edna is a character so thoroughly and consciously created that her autobiography, ?My Gorgeous Life,? was shelved at bookstores in the Non-Fiction department, helping to further blur the line between character and real person. First appearing about 30 years ago in Australia as a satiric commentary on the aspiration to mediocrity that Barry Humphries observed in his country, Dame Edna was at first merely an ?ordinary housewife? who appeared on stage and on telly to indict what Humphries? felt was his countryman?s complete oblivion to art, literature, and in fact anything beyond the acquisition of goods that personified what we in America call ?keeping up with the Jones??. Eventually the character emigrated to England, where she became a Housewife and Superstar, friend to the Queen, advisor to the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and long-distance confidant to the bewildered president, Mr. Reagan. In Thatcher?s brutal England where the poor were mercilessly cut loose and the emphasis on middle-class consumption was at an all-time high, Edna came into her own, receiving her status as a Dame of the Empire, and taking Ms. Thatcher?s own words, ?care and share,? and using them to draw attention to the ultimate hypocrisy and cruelty of the PM?s regime. With her silent ?Bride?s Maid and Traveling Companion,?, Madge (played by Emily Perry, who is one of the world?s greatest mimes--no, not the leotard & white-faced sort?the silent actor sort), who is used to receive her mistresses? most pointed barbs and to be a foil to Edna?s blatant self-absorption, she finds a way to decimate her guests while never once losing their good-will towards herself. Nor does she lose ours, as her genius is saying that which we are all thinking, but would never dare to utter. By doing this, she takes us along on the ride of our lives, as both celebrities and we willing serve ourselves up to her gratefully, glad to bask in the reflection of her glory for just a few moments.

See her live in a city near you (but don't sit in the first 6 rows, unless you're willing to end up on stage yourself at the end of the show, and see for yourselves what it is to serve yourself up!), but until then, enjoy watching her treat celebrities like ordinary people, just as she treats the ordinary people in her audiences as celebrities. This Mega-star of the extraordinary face furniture, 100% natural Wisteria-colored hair, and razor-sharp mind will keep you entertained to within an inch of your life.

**** Addendum added after live show in San Francisco, 2005: A friend and I unexpectedly ended up in the very front row on my 4th time seeing the fabulous monster that is Dame Edna, and he was chosen (by her magic Gladiola, her signature flower) to go onstage to act in a "family drama" about Edna's origins, long before she became a Housewife/Superstar, let alone a Dame of the English Empire. Playing her (now deceased) husband, Norm, my friend was put into a hospital gown and slippers, and with several others from the audience, acted with Edna in a lunatic skit in what was meant to be her former, humble Australian suburban home. As her husband, he needed to kiss her, which was frightening and hilarious, and at the end, each of the "actors" were Polaroided with Dame Edna for posterity (or possibly eternal damnation). Having warned viewers here about this danger, I wanted to come back to tell you it had happened to us (never was I so grateful to have been overlooked). The experience was deeply surreal for my friend as well as for me, watching and nearly dying of painful laughter, but the picture has been scanned and sent as a X-mas card from him and Edna, while the original has pride of place on my refrigerator. So again I warn you--watch out should you get to see her live, as even if you don't end up on stage, some people in the first 5 or 6 rows WILL end up in the show somehow, either being interviewed (interogated is more accurate) for all to hear, or perhaps having your homes called so that Edna can interogate your suddenly very talkative children (who are on speaker-phone, telling everyone about your impending divorce), maybe being forced to take off your shoes or jewelry for her inspection and merciless criticism (I say forced, but actually everyone just does exactly what she tells them to, and answers the most personal, outrageous questions from their seats) and perhaps you will be one of the blessed, and end up beside her on stage, only realizing later that you paid a great deal of money and then worked too, rather than the other way round! Therein lies the genius of Dame Edna: she turns your world upside down and inside out, yet you end up thanking her for it. Perversity as Fine Art--that's Barry Humphries and his most marvelous creation, Dame Edna Everage.