WHAT A DRAG
There are so many ways to glitter and be gay in modern American Musical Theater. The recent revival of 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, currently on Broadway, celebrates vogue-crazed drag queens with foot fetishes who want to strut their stuff on a runway in Milan. And now, tea-bagging its disco balls around the globe, comes 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 (a.k.a. “bent beauties”) who shock Australia’s outback rednecks with colors that nature never nurtured.
You know what’s coming when Brian Thomson’s opening set piece is the Sydney Harbor bridge done up in sequins (during the curtain call, the Sydney Opera House is spectacularly recreated in a costumed 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 Pantages 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 (the divine Flying By Foy Divas who float in and out of the scenes like the feathered birds in Disneyland’s “Tiki Room” are Emily Afton, Bre Jackson, and Brit West). It’s an interesting device but a little difficult to watch when Stephen “Spud” Murphy’s snazzy arrangements are occasionally sung by the Divas but lip-synched (lip-sunk?) by the leads.
The transvestite trio includes Tick a.k.a. Mitzi (hotly presented by Wade McCollum), a father hoping for a reunion with his eight-year-old son, Benji (Shane Davis, who plays the child as cutesy as one of the orphans in Annie); Adam a.k.a. Felicia (prettily played by Bryan West), the sassy youngest member 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”); and finally, 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, you guessed it, Les Girls.
Tick’s wife, Marion (Christy Faber), conveniently owns a casino in Alice Springs and needs a club act for a few weeks; it is this paper-thin premise that gives Tick the strength to depart Sydney and finally meet his son. Of course, as this exotic threesome peregrinates through dead-end desert dumps like Broken Hill, Nowhere, Woop-Woop, and Coober Pedy on the way to their engagement, they encounter reflexive resistance from less than hospitable inhabitants (who sing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” along with goofy audience members who are incongruently brought on stage). But it’s nothing that a bad kick in the groin or an 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, the 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 ridiculous Australian accents that sometimes sound like Crocodile Dundee on crack, and the horrible sound typical of the Pantages which had one audience member mumble, “What language are they speaking?).
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 150 outsized minutes, excess is success, more is more, and drag defies its name: As with many drag shows of the past, this raunchy runway manages to be a stairway to paradise. However, because of its somewhat numbing flamboyance and manipulative moments, if there were a theme park called Broadwayland, Priscilla the Musical the Ride would not be an “E Ticket” for “Extraordinary” – it would be a “D Ticket” for “Drag.” You can read that any way you’d like.
photos by Joan Marcus
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
presented by Broadway in L. A.
produced on tour by Troika Entertainment and Nullarbor Productions Ltd.
at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood
scheduled to end on June 16, 2013
for tickets visit http://www.HollywoodPantages.com
national tour scheduled to end on November 17, 2013
for dates and cities, visit http://www.priscillaontour.com/tour/
