IIn 1989, when Dame Edna was knocked them dead at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, John Lahr spent a month in the wings watching the elusive Humphries and his partners in mayhem—Dame Eda, Sir Les Patterson, and Sandy Stone—drive audiences crazy with pleasure.

What emerges is a superb chonicle of a great act and a great clown, full of fun and insight, that gives the reader both the buzz of backstage life and the jazz of Humphries’ private conversation. Lahr, himself the son of a great clown, understands comedy and clowns from the inside; he offers us an insider’s account of Humphries’ prodigious talent and Dame Edna’s majestic frivolity. In showing the connection between laughter and the life it decoys, Dame Edna and the Rise of Western Civilisation goes beyond reportage to an inquiry into the nature of comedy which Lahr has persued over the years in his biographies of Bert Lahr, Noel Coward, and Joe Orton.

Lahr paints a word picture so vivid that we can almost touch Edna’s natural wisteria hair (actually yak) and see Sir Less add the finishing touch of Lea and Perrin’s to his tuxedo shirt before going out to spit on the paying customers. We also glimpse the mysterious transformation of this enigmatic Australian aesthete into one of the era’s most glorious comic turns. In this transfixing close-up, Lahr takes the reader on an unprecedented journey. Many books have been written about comedians and comedy but never, like Lahr’s, from backstage.

Winner of the Roger Machell Prize for Excellence in Writing about the Performing Arts.

“This is the definitive study.”

Michael Coveney, Observer

“Brilliantly precise, exhilaratingly perceptive.”

Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph

“John Lahr’s portrait of Edna is definitive and perfect. Lahr is the most penetratingly perceptive and articulate analyst of theatrical comic performances since Kenneth Tynan”.

Patrick Skene Catling, Evening Standard

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk