When Sandy Stone, the fictitious, soft-spoken devoted husband brought to brilliant life by Barry Humphries, passed away on stage in the early 1970s, his ghost delivered his own eulogy. “Needless to say, there wasn’t much of a turn-up,” Sandy said of his funeral.
The same could not be said for Humphries himself, the comedian, satirist, artist and music academic, whose life and death was celebrated in a colourful state memorial that drew reflections from family members, international celebrities, the prime minister and even King Charles III.
The nuance of Barry Humphries’ thought was best found in his lesser works. Credit: Artwork by Monique Westermann
Anyone who knew Humphries – or one of his creations, Stone, the boorish Sir Les Patterson or the inimitable Dame Edna Everage – understood the uncertain collision of fear and fun risked by proximity to Humphries’ performances, the King said.
“Those who tried to stand on their dignity, only lost their footing. Those who wondered whether Australia’s housewife superstar might this time just go too far, were always proved right.”
The state memorial for Barry Humphries under the sails of the Sydney Opera House was everything it ought to have been – even fashionably late, coming more than seven months after Humphries’ death in April of this year.
Two of the theatre world’s greats, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, spoke of Humphries’ brilliance. The prime minister and NSW state premier of his cultural significance. And music legend Elton John of his good humour.
In the cultural memory of Australians, however, Humphries is known best as Dame Edna Everage, the Moonee Ponds housewife whose journey to the UK in the wake of her miscreant nephew Barry McKenzie in the 1970s put her on the path to international stardom.
In 1974, Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam granted her a damehood. She became a confidante to US president Ronald Reagan and Queen Elizabeth II. Gigastardom was inevitable, really.
But Edna’s inner life was vast and complex: her mother in a maximum security twilight home, her permanently infirm (later deceased) husband Norm, eldest son Bruce, daughter-in-law Joylene, dress designer son Kenny, Kenny’s roommate Clifford Smale, and youngest daughter Valmai. Aside from Kenny, as you might expect, all were disappointments to the perfect (and perfectionist) Edna in some way, shape or form.
“You mustn’t judge Australia by the Australians,” Dame Edna once quipped. And yet, if it was Dame Edna’s unwavering belief that we were a nation of boors, in the finality of her life she would be proud we shook away our bad manners and rose to meet the moment when Barry Humphries passed away. A state memorial with a eulogy from the King? Even the finely tuned Dame Edna would have to concede it was an extraordinary moment.
Lizzie Spender (centre), Rupert and Oscar Humphries arrive at the Sydney Opera House.Credit: Janie Barrett
Unsurprisingly too, the inner life of the man behind Dame Edna was revealed to be impossibly and fabulously complex as well. Humphries was 89 years old when he died; he played Edna for almost 68 of them. He was a skilled artist, an almost peerless raconteur and a virtuoso in the field of the jazz-influenced music of the Weimar Republic, the name given to Germany between the two world wars.
The examination of Humphries’ life also revealed he was an artist of substantial talent. Another lifelong friend, the art dealer Philip Bacon, said Humphries was happiest brush in hand “painting a beautiful picture”. Bacon spoke of painting trips to the outback in the company of John Olsen and Arthur Boyd. And Humphries’ passion for modern – if slightly offensive – art, such as one early piece, a gumboot filled with custard titled “Pus in Boots”.
“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing the laugh of the century,” Humphries told his former assistant Karl Schmid, now a television reporter in the United States. Humphries’ also gave Schmid, who spoke on stage at the Opera House, his best life advice: “Always live a little bit beyond your means.”
Much of the memorial was played for laughs. The cabaret artist Meow Meow performed a repertoire of Weimar-inspired music. “If Dame Edna represented the refinement, the consideration and the style of the upper house, Sir Les was without a doubt the lower house,” quipped Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The mischief and lightness of touch would have delighted Humphries.
Andrew Ross and Karl Schmid at the state memorial Service for Barry Humphries.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
But the memorial was also deeply moving. At different moments, Schmid and musical director Andrew Ross fought back tears. Humphries’ daughter Tessa read a poem her father had penned about his birthplace, the city of Melbourne. And his sons Rupert and Oscar spoke of their father’s complexities. “His was a life in two acts, the chaos of addiction and then sobriety,” Oscar said.
The audience was peppered with Humphries’ high-profile friends and acquaintances. The writer Kathy Lette. The barrister and academic Geoffrey Robertson. The actress Jackie Weaver. The singer and actress Nell Campbell. Barry Crocker, who played Dame Edna’s nephew Barry McKenzie. And former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and his wife, former Sydney lord mayor Lucy Turnbull.
Of the possibility of his own death, Humphries once said: “I think the last part of one’s life is a journey back. It has a sort of symmetry. I think Australia would be quite a place really to die. I will be a ghost because I have a very strong psychic doppelganger which will survive. And it will probably haunt the house my father built in Camberwell.”
And like many great artists, the nuance of Humphries’ thought was best found in his lesser works. Not the archly drawn Dame Edna, or the fabulously revolting Sir Les Patterson, but in the gently haunting presence of Sandy Stone, a dreary Melburnian so uninteresting he couldn’t even be killed; he simply remained on stage as a ghostly presence.
Barry Humphries in 1991 as Sandy Stone.
Unlike Humphries’ more vulgar creations, Stone was conceived as a statement on the intellectual inertia of Australian life, but actually evolved into a magnificent reflection of its gentility, its simple values and a deep and affecting sense of its melancholy. “They were better days if you ask me,” Sandy said of his life, though in the whisper of Sandy’s voice, Humphries’ own is easily heard. “We had the best of it.”
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