Origins of Character
When Barry Humphries first began to perform as Edna Everage during his one-man shows, the character of Madge Allsop, Edna's bridesmaid and companion, was only ever mentioned in passing and never actually depicted on stage. By the early 1970s, Madge was an increasingly strong presence in Edna's on-stage musings, but still remained unseen. In Barry Humphries' 1971 Australian show, A Load of Old Stuffe, her monologue was entitled "Edna and Madge Allsop in Stratford", while a later one, performed in the 1974 show At least you can say you have seen it, was entitled "Polish up your Kiwi (with Madge Allsop)".
In 1976, Humphries decided to finally bring Madge Allsop to life with an appearance in his new BBC TV series, The Barry Humphries Show. She was portrayed by the London-based expatriate Australian actress Madeleine Orr, who appeared as Madge on several subsequent occasions until her death three years later. Over a period of almost thirty years, from 1976 until 2003, the adult Madge Allsop was portrayed by at least six different people:
- 1976-79 - Madeleine Orr
- 1982 - Unidentified actress/model, in the book Dame Edna's Bedside Companion
- 1987 - Connie Hobbs (in the film Les Patterson saves the world)
- 1987-2003 - Emily Perry (on stage and TV)
- 1989 - Anne Charleston (as a joke, on one episode of The Dame Edna Experience)
- 1998 - Kerris Peeling (who portrayed Madge as a young woman in the stage show Dame Edna: The Spectacle)
Read more about this topic: Madge Allsop
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins and/or character:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)