BREAKOUT IN THE OUTBACK
There are so many ways to glitter and be gay in American Musical Theater: La Cage Aux Folles depicts the unexpected bourgeois normality in a near-marriage of boa-wrapped impersonators at a gender-breaking Riviera nightclub; Kinky Boots celebrates vogue-crazed drag queens with foot fetishes who want to strut their stuff on a runway in Milan (one wonders how many fantasies this show can service); last (and possibly least if only because “flamboyant” is now so familiar), is Stephan Elliott and Alan Scott’s Priscilla Queen of the Desert, which flaunts Tim Chappel and Lizzie Gardiner’s Tony-winning costumes in order to celebrate the “fish out of water” survival strategies of three feathered friends; these “bent beauties” will shock Australia’s outback rednecks with colors nature never nurtured.
You know what’s coming when the opening set piece is the Sydney Harbor bridge done up in sequins (the last is the Opera House spectacularly recreated in a tableau vivant). Based on the 1993 Australian film starring Guy Pierce and Terence Stamp, Elliott’s stylish saga, now in a suitably flaming touring production at the Auditorium Theatre, was inspired by the sight of “a drag queen’s feathered plume rolling down the street like a tumbleweed from a Sergio Leone western.” Out of that incongruous mash-up, Elliott imagined a hero journey/road trip full of culture clashes and peripatetic adventures, a quest that connects three diverse female impersonators/drag queens/whatever into a fireball of friendship.
Priscilla, of course, takes its name from the battered old bus – here transformed into an iridescent chariot of the goddesses, complete with a scintillating drag boot – that takes drag personae Bernadette, Felicia and Mitzi to a consummate triumph in Alice Springs, the capital of the subcontinent’s big bush. Featuring a jukebox score of dancing-queen delights, including “It’s Raining Men,” “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, “Finally” and “I Will Survive,” this high-octane dragfest is accompanied by a chorus of Divas not unlike the back-up babes in Little Shop of Horrors.
Tick a.k.a. Mitzi (hotly presented by Wade McCollum) is a father hoping for a reunion with his son, Benji (Shane Davis). Adam a.k.a. Felicia (prettily played by Bryan West) is the sassy youngest member of the transvestite trio who eschews lip-synching as boringly “old school”; he’s a material-girl Madonna lover who’s ready at the snap of his fingers to camp it up “Like a Virgin.” Finally is the wise but not world-weary Bernadette (Scott Willis), a veteran of the once notorious Sydney spectacle, Les Girls, who is now down to one name only; she just lost her longtime lover but is ready for a second chance (even “A Fine Romance”) with the right mechanic (Joe Hart) who comes along with fond memories of Les Girls.
Of course, as this exotic threesome peregrinate through dead-end desert dumps like Broken Hill, Nowhere, Woop-Woop, Coober Pedy and finally Alice Springs, they encounter reflexive resistance from less than hospitable inhabitants (“Thank God I’m a Country Boy”). But it’s nothing that a bad kick in the groin or a XXX-rated insult can’t overcome. Pretty in pink (not to mention mauve, chartreuse, puce and tangerine), these irrepressible, ultimately irresistible, paragons of glam manage to clomp, romp and stomp their way into the hearts of the gaping yokels. From a Village People homage in “Go West” to a take-off on La Traviata to a procession of beefcakes on parade to the perfectly-named “Colour My World,” the fully festooned chorus in Simon Philips’ staging never met a cliché that couldn’t be costumed.
Floored by this neo-Ziegfeld floor show, Chicago’s Auditorium audience becomes, well, captivated, willing to put up with a plot that’s one inch deep when the rest is louder and brighter than life (and all of this despite Australian accents that can sometimes sound like Crocodile Dundee on crack). In Priscilla, everything that moves manages to flash as well. Yes, everything is bedecked with colored lights, showered confetti, fringe and furbelows, dangling divas, heavenly headdresses, hunky chorus boys, and wigs that could make a supernova blush. For 180 outsized minutes excess is success, more is more, and drag defies its name: Life becomes art, namely a raunchy runway that’s a stairway to paradise.
photos by Joan Marcus
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
presented by Broadway in Chicago
Troika Entertainment at the Auditorium Theatre
scheduled to end on March 31, 2013
for tickets call 800-982-2787 or visit www.BroadwayinChicago.com
national tour scheduled to end on November 17, 2013
for dates and cities, visit http://www.priscillaontour.com/tour/
for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com