All About Me Review: Dame Edna, Michael Feinstein as Sonny and Cher

“It’s not about you,” the actress playing the stage manager scolds the two feuding stars of “All About Me,” Michael Feinstein and Dame Edna Everage. “It’s about them,” she says, pointing to the audience. “They want a show.”

“All About Me,” which has now opened at the Henry Miller Theater, would seem to have all that it takes to be a Broadway show, including nine new songs and an attention-getting publicity campaign. But the stage manager’s comment comes an hour after the curtain rises, and I was still, in a way, waiting for one. As winning as some of “All About Me” may be, the 90 minutes of shtick and song are likely to disappoint all but the most devoted members of each performer’s cult – and perhaps even some of them.

The two entertainers have certainly demonstrated in the past that they know what a show is. Dame Edna, the dotty persona in blinding couture played by 76-year-old Australian comedian Barry Humphries, has been the star of her own Broadway show twice before, to great applause. A kind of cross between Barbara Cartland and Don Rickles, Dame Edna can inspire waves of laughter with nothing more than a look. But she rarely just looks. “You’ve aged, you’ve aged tragically,” she tells the audience in “All About Me,” before selecting individuals in the orchestra to make fun of. Her satire can be breathtakingly barbed. She tells us she has adopted a baby from the African Republic of Chlamydia; “I got it from the same village where Madonna shops for her loved ones.”

Michael Feinstein, a Grammy nominated singer and piano player, has been on Broadway three times before with well-received concerts of selections from what is usually called the Great American Songbook. Here he plays a white piano and sings from Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, et al. backed with a 12-piece orchestra that appears in an elaborate all-white set as if performing in a 1930’s Busby Berkeley movie musical. In addition, he has composed five of the nine original songs in “All About Me” (Humphries has contributed lyrics to five).

As always, Humphries has moments of hilarity; Feinstein is mellifluous and charming.

So what’s the problem? Although playwright Christopher Durang is listed as the co-writer, “All About Me” doesn’t seem so much scripted as jerry-rigged -– the tethering together of two successful acts by the thin strand of a single joke.

That joke started months ago when separate press releases by different theater publicists announced that 1, a Michael Feinstein concert of American Songbook standards would open on Broadway on March 6th with the title “All About Me,” and 2. A comic romp with Dame Edna would arrive on Broadway a week earlier, on March 6, 2010, with the title “It’s All About Me.”

Dueling press releases followed to give the impression of a feud over the similar titles. Michael Feinstein was quoted in his: “Titles are not copyrightable. I wish Ms. Edna well. I’ve heard of her.”
Dame Edna was quoted in hers: “Someone purchased a CD of Mr. Feinstein’s at a flea market in Australia and re-gifted it to me recently. I’m impressed at how often he sings on key.”

The feud was soon resolved; their publicists announced they would be combining both shows into one. It was all a publicity stunt – the intention was to do a show together from the outset — but the joke continues. First, there are the Playbills that the ushers distribute, half of which show only Michael Feinstein on the cover and credit him as the co-writer with Durang, the other half Dame Edna and credit only Barry Humphries as Durang’s co-writer. Then there is the music before the curtain opens, an overture that cleverly juxtaposes a few bars of over-the-top strip tease with a Gershwin tinkle, and offers tiny snippets of every grand Broadway show you can think of.

When the curtain rises, Feinstein makes a splashy entrance atop a staircase and underneath a flashy “All About Me” sign, and offers song and patter for about 15 minutes. It is only after Feinstein is finishing his third song, “The Lady Is A Tramp,” that Dame Edna appears with an even splashier entrance, awash in sequins and reclining atop one of the pianos in a sensuous pose. “I’m sorry I’m a little late,” she says to Feinstein, “but thanks for doing the warm-up.” She calls for two black-shirted muscle men to carry Feinstein off. Then the he-men return, don pink sequin vests and do a song-and-dance routine with Dame Edna, the beginning of about 15 minutes of her routine — until Feinstein, his tuxedo torn, escapes back onto the stage.

Feuding and dueling and duets follow, at one point the stage manager dividing the stage in half with yellow police tape and limiting each performer to a minute at a time, punctuated by a foghorn.

In theory, all this should be great fun, the latest incarnation of the bickering duo that has a long tradition in American entertainment: Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Sonny and Cher. But these were comedy acts that worked for years to harmonize their disharmony. Feinstein and Dame Edna have not had as much practice together, and they seem not so much to complement as to interrupt one another. Just because they joke about how little chemistry they have together doesn’t mean they actually have any. The result is a sense that neither gets enough time, or, depending on your taste, one gets too much time — or both get too much.

Update March 29: The producers have announced “All About Me” will close April4, little more than two weeks after opening.

Twitterers: Follow Jonathan Mandell at New York Theater

All About Me
Written by Christopher Durang, Michael Feinstein and Barry Humphries
Directed by Casey Nicholaw
Scenic and costume design by Anna Louizos, lighting by Howell Binkley, sound design by Peter Fitzgerald, Dame Edna’s gowns by Sephen Adnitt
Cast:
Michael Feinstein, Barry Humphries, Jodi Capeless (stage manager), Bruno (Gregory Butler), Benito (Jon-Paul Mateo)
Running time: Ninety minutes with no intermission
Ticket prices: $49.50 to $121.50; Student rush: $26.50; Premium as high as $251.50.