Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical is a 2 1/2 hour romp of amazing costumes, energetic performances and a big old bus on stage. It’s a stubby version of the one in the film, as the stage requires. The side opens up and luckily it’s not the star of the show.
After a short overture, the curtain goes up to reveal a light-bulb version of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. In a moment of hometown pride, the audience applauded. From above flies in three what appear to be drag queens (but probably weren’t) who act as Greek Chorus for the entire musical. When the stars are supposed to be lip-syncing the three sing.
The musical maintains all the major plot points from the movie, but shortens and condenses a few things. All the songs from the movie seem to have made it into the production too. Consequently, it’s a cavalcade of pop songs. There are some new numbers written for the show and it’s here the production falls a little flat. They’re over quickly and we’re back to Abba, Gloria Gaynor, Pet Shop Boys, Donna Summer, John Denver and many others.
The singing and dancing throughout are universally good. The cast does a fine job. The three leads are strong performers at times channelling the original stars of the movie. I’d mention their names, but no Playbill is handed out and the program was $20. The strongest of the three was the guy playing Felicia. He definitely saw Guy Piece in the movie and modeled his performance on Guy’s. Normally, I would find fault with that, but most everyone who sees this musical will have seen the movie and are familiar with the characters. The guy playing Bernadette didn’t have the best voice, but sang with that old drag queen gravely sound that was appropriate. The one playing Mitzy did a good job, but missed some the emotional depth that was reached in the film.
The costumes were done by the same person who did them for the movie and were incredible. They caused major laughter throughout the show. The final number parades out all the costumes from the montage at the end of the movie. The three leads obviously can’t change into each one, so surrogates come out in each. It worked quite nicely.
There are a lot of Australian references that American audiences wouldn’t quite get, so if this is to travel to Broadway the production will need some tweaking. Some gentle editing of the script and you might get a hit. It won’t be another Mama Mia runaway hit, but it could have a respectable run on Broadway. Update: Since Mama Mia became a hit on Broadway this musical was reworked using disco music of the time. It didn’t work as well. We saw it when it was on tour in San Francisco.
The whole evening was quite enjoyable. It was light rousing fun, especially if you didn’t think about it too much and just gave into it all. The bar even got into the spirit of things serving drinks in battery operated flashing colored martini glasses. I had to have one. The t-shirts and souvenirs were a big disappointment. Almost all of them were pink. The “A Cock on a Rock in a Frock” shirt was a navy tank top (they call them singlets here). I wish it had been available as a t-shirt. I’ll just have to live with my memory
Recent Comments