Raunchy road trip
The
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert took every
homosexual stereotype and without challenging them turned them
into a popular, if lurid, hit film. It worked because most of
the straight characters encountered in that 'road movie' were
equally stereotyped. The stage adaptation replicates the film’s
major episodes faithfully, abbreviating some like the Broken Hill
scene or adapting others such as the koori encounter making them
an opportunity for a musical sequence. Most of the pop songs have
been retained and in padding out the story in musical terms, more
pop standards have been raided so that every scene has a song.
While most musicals, like all music theatre, will
use music to advance a scene or situation, in Priscilla
they rarely do this. Instead the dialogue is halted for song which
often erupts into extended fantasy scene and a cue for elaborate
costumes and not so elaborate dance sequences. Big production
numbers, an eagerly awaited moment in any musical and usually
occurring toward the end of the first act where the plot complications
merge into a log-jam of visual and vocal activity keep happening
throughout Priscilla.
The result is a play with musical (admittedly spectacular)
interruptions. I would have preferred songs being chosen to help
the dramatic situation. The unlikely romance between transsexual
Bernadette (Tony Sheldon) and the country mechanic Bob (Michael
Caton) could have used a duet (I’m thinking the Sinatra/Hazlewood
“And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid…”)
instead it was played as per the film and followed by yet another
drag extravaganza this time with whirling cake costumes. The downside
of these bizarre drag costumes is that they inhibit any form of
choreography beyond a Ziegfeld Folly promenade and twirl.
There is little dramatic tension in the stage adaptation, the
first act ends suddenly and flatly with the trio halfway to Alice
Springs and only once is there an opportunity for dramatic musical
action. The Coober Pedy scene, where the frocked up Adam is assaulted
by the rough neck locals. It looks strangely like the rape scene
from West Side Story with men from Snowy River and a
drag queen replacing the New York gang and Puerto Rican girl but
it put some badly need tension into the show. In this regard Priscilla
is modeled on the pre-war musical comedies and operettas where
a lightweight plot was interspersed with songs and dances.
The salvation of the film was in the choice and performance of
the three leads, Terrence Stamp in particular. Jeremy Stanford
and Daniel Scott play Tick and Adam as closely to Hugo Weaving
and Guy Pierce as possible and they sing like pop baritones. In
Sheldon’s hands the flinty old dowager Bernadette is a pantomime
dame, a combination of his drag act from Torch Song Trilogy
and own his showbiz mother Toni Lamond.
The look of the show is however incredible. Brian
Thompson is one of the most imaginative designers in the country.
Nick Schlieper’s masterful lighting make the road scenes
glow with an intense outback and Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner
have recreated their costumes and invented more on the same scale.
Musicals may no longer be as wholesome as they
were in Rogers and Hammerstein’s day but retaining the notorious
ping-pong ball scene and so much of the course language and humour
from the film won’t make Priscilla the obvious
family favourite.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
