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| HEEL ON WHEELS: Nick Adams as the fabulous Felicia atop the iconic trans-Australia bus 'Priscilla' in the joyous musical adaptation of Aussie camp classic 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,' now playing at the Palace. Photo: Joan Marcus |
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Theater
Review
The Americanization of Priscilla:
Down Under musical is anything but a drag
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By Scott Harrah
Broadway has a new queen that will certainly have a long reign over the musical –theater realm —and her name is Priscilla. Rarely do musical adaptations of films work on the stage, and the same notion holds true for “jukebox musicals,” the much-maligned theatrical genre that weaves classic pop songs into a narrative. In the past decade, only the ABBA-themed Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys (featuring the songs of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) have achieved phenomenal, long-running success as “jukebox” musicals. So it was truly risky when, back in 2006, Australia and New Zealand productions attempted to adapt the 1994 Aussie cult classic film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert into a full-fledged stage musical. The subsequent production on London’s West End was a commercial hit, but received a lukewarm response from the British critics.
How can one adapt a road movie about drag queens traveling through Australia’s Outback on a rickety but bedazzled, adorned old bus, dressing up in outlandish costumes and lip-synching to other people’s songs into a Broadway show? The concept itself does not sound like it would work on the stage, but the naysayers who doubted Priscilla could be turned into a Broadway musical were totally wrong. After all, drag queens are primarily known for mouthing the words to pop and disco standards for camp value, and that fact alone is the sheer, simplistic brilliance of this entertaining show, which—without question—the best musical adaptation of a film to hit Broadway since Hairspray.
Here is a show that is not only plausible, with cherished pop and disco songs everybody knows, but actually enhances the 1994 film by bringing it to glorious life on the stage for the masses to savor and enjoy: From the very first scene, when three divas, acting as a sort of disco Greek chorus, descend down to the stage on wires, belting out the Weather Girls’ gay disco anthem “It’s Raining Men” as buff chorus boys dance around. The show starts out with a glorious, ethereal bang and never lets up, and that’s the true benchmark of any great musical. Nathan Lee Graham, as Miss Understanding, a Tina Turner impersonator, is hysterical when she sings "What’s Love Got to Do With It?"
The same characters from the film are all here: Tick/Mitzi (Will Swenson from the recent revival of Hair ); buff Adam/Felicia (Nick Adams); and the middle-aged trannie Bernadette (Tony Sheldon, giving the show’s best performance), who is mourning the death of her boyfriend, but the story maintains a consistent lighthearted tone even in its dramatic moments. Even the funeral for Bernadette's lover is done with humor and verve as the cast sings Thelma Houston’s disco crowd-pleaser “Don’t Leave Me This Way.”
Without giving too much of the story away, the boy/girls travel throughout the Outback from Sydney, New South Wales to the far-away town of Alice Springs in the middle of the Australian desert to perform at a casino and meet Tick’s son, Benji (alternated at certain performances by Luke Mannikus and Ashton Worez). Only Mr. Sheldon, a native Australian actor, truly has an authentic Aussie accent, while the rest of the predominantly American cast struggles with the "Down Unda" twang, but it doesn’t matter because the show is so entertaining that one overlooks the show’s need for a better dialect coach.
What keeps everything moving at a toe-tapping, high-energy pace are the many familiar songs, from Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” to “MacArthur Park” (featuring cast members dressed in cupcake costumes) to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and Peaches and Herb’s “Shake Your Groove Thing.” Unfortunately, the ABBA songs that were so prevalent in the film are totally absent here, but it would not make sense to use them since Mamma Mia! is playing just down the street. Also missing is the hilarious saccharine ballad “I’ve Never Been to Me” by Charlene that was so iconic in the film.
In the Australian and London productions, the Felicia character was obsessed with Aussie pop superstar Kylie Minogue, and performed a medley of her songs atop Ayers Rock, but here Felicia’s idol has been replaced by Madonna to appeal more to American audiences. Much as Miss Minogue is an Aussie legend, she is not as famous on this side of the Atlantic, and the show benefits from a full slate of Material Girl classics, from “Like a Prayer” to “Like a Virgin” and “Holiday.” However, it is puzzling as to why Felicia didn’t sing a Madonna song atop Ayers Rock, the landmark also known as Uluru to aborigines. The show could have done without the “girls” singing Pat Benatar’s silly 1980s power-pop ballad “We Belong” while standing on top of Uluru.
There were numerous reports that Bette Midler and some of the show’s other producers wanted to tone down the overt sexuality of the film to make the musical more palatable for American audiences, but most of the film’s outrageousness is left intact, and it hardly seems “sanitized” to appeal to families. Even the infamous ping-pong scene is kept in the show—but done tastefully—and carried out in a hilarious number by Filipina spitfire Cynthia (played with over-the-top aplomb by J. Elaine Marcos) as she dances atop an Outback bar to the old M kitsch song “Pop Muzik,” much to the horror of her husband, Bob (C. David Johnson), the liberal-minded mechanic who helps repair the drag queens’ bus and takes a shine to Bernadette.
The real stars of the show, besides the hit parade of a soundtrack, are Tim Chappel and Lizzie Gardiner’s outlandish costumes, for which both won an Oscar in the film version of Priscilla. All the platform shoes, flip-flop sandal dresses, absurd, colorful wigs and clown-like makeup transform the cast into colorful caricatures that are always visually appealing.
Ross Coleman’s choreography is serviceable but rather pedestrian, but the energy of the cast and the songs more than make up for the lack of innovation in the dance moves.
Simon Phillips’ direction keeps everything moving at a rapid-fire pace, but the show isn’t free of flaws. Most of the book contains the same jokes from the film, but some fall flat. In addition, Will Swenson’s performance as Tick seems a bit too “butch” to be completely convincing.
More than anything, Priscilla has a universal message of tolerance and acceptance of misfits beneath its glitzy, fun-loving exterior, and it is something that people of all nations can relate to in the 21st century. However, the show is never heavy-handed. It is pure, feel-good entertainment, with plenty of confetti raining from the ceiling and songs that will inspire audiences to get up and dance and sing along, and isn’t that the point of any great Broadway musical?
Published March 23, 2011
Reviewed at press performance on March 22, 2011
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