She’s got her eye on you

If you go to see “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!” -- and you should -- be advised to bring along your sunglasses. In her Tony-nominated show, now in a brief engagement at the Ahmanson, the Dame sets out to dazzle, and does.

That’s not just because of Stephen Adnitt and Will Goodwin’s costumes, glitzy ensembles that look like the fallout from a detonated Christmas tree. No, the most dazzling element of this enterprise is sheer, unadulterated, improvisational wit -- that offhand acerbity that has become the hallmark of any Dame Edna appearance.

Some more advice: Don’t arrive late, especially if you have orchestra seats. You don’t want to draw Dame Edna’s attention if you can help it, and tardiness may earn a lacerating reprimand or two. (You paupers up in the balcony, or “paupies,” as Dame Edna affectionately refers to you, needn’t be quite so concerned.)

For those who may have lived in a fallout shelter for the last several decades, Dame Edna is actually Barry Humphries, a notably reserved painter and actor who began refining his hyper-flamboyant character back in the mid-1950s in his native Australia.

The conceit behind Humphries’ alter ego is that Dame Edna was initially a Melbourne housewife living in modest circumstances with her husband, Norm, a man plagued by prostate problems and his dissatisfied wife’s dreams of celebrity.

As the story has it, Mrs. Norm Everage followed her bliss all the way to stardom as the renowned Dame Edna, one of the few living personages who has been accorded her own Australian postal stamp. And as if that wasn’t glory enough, this megastar has recently been upgraded to “gigastar” status, a distinction she does not hesitate to share with us. After all, Dame Edna has never been one for hiding her light under a bushel. In fact, the announcer at the beginning of the show asks us to welcome “the most admired woman in the world,” an assertion we accept on blissful faith, even though the woman in question happens to be a man.

Here, actual gender is a niggling distinction. When Dame Edna comes sailing down from the heavens on a pair of bejeweled, cat’s-eye spectacles that make Bette Midler’s clamshell seem positively prosaic, we willfully suspend -- make that jettison -- disbelief.

Cavorting on production designers Brian Thomson and Harley Medcalf’s red-swathed set, an appropriate jewel box for this glittering diva, Dame Edna intersperses her show with amusing musical numbers, abetted by her accompanist and “Master of the Dame’s Musick,” Wayne Barker, and the Gorgeous Ednaettes, Teri DiGianfelice and Michelle Pampena, long-limbed lovelies whose smooth moves only serve to emphasize Dame Edna’s own hilariously idiosyncratic “dancing.”

There’s obviously scripted material, including some tried-and-true references from past shows. And, although she claims to be completely apolitical, Dame Edna is not above a few pointed topical barbs.

That’s all secondary, however, to the real business of the evening, which is Dame Edna’s interaction with randomly selected audience members. Again, those in the first few rows, be prepared. You just might find yourselves divested of your shoes, or decked in leather drag.

As for Humphries, who has “devised and written” this show (with additional material by Andrew Ross), he is brilliantly subsumed into his character, the delightfully crass exponent of his durable comedy. He has been and remains an inspired showman whose lacerating intelligence never dulls.

*

‘Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!’

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays

Ends: April 9

Price: $30 to $85

Contact: (213) 628-2772 or www.CenterTheatreGroup.org