Review: Priscilla Queen of the Desert (+pics, vid)

Drag queens, colourful costumes and high-flying acrobatics - the musical version of Priscilla has it all. Reviewer Heather McCracken checks it out.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical
Where: The Civic, Auckland
When: Tuesday, May 27

Three drag queens on a disco odyssey accross the desert: Priscilla Queen of the Desert was always made to be a musical.

The stage adaption of the hit movie comes to Auckland with big expectations after taking $40 million at the box office in Sydney.

And it delivered a riot of colour, noise, and dirty double entendre.

Our three queens, Daniel Scott, Jeremy Stanford and Tony Sheldon, are supported by a 30-strong cast and 300 fantastic, whimsical costumes.

Scott struts his stuff convincingly as Adam/Felicia, who joins the desert troupe to fulfil a dream to climb Ayers Rock (becoming a you-know-what, in a frock, on a rock).

Jeremy Stanford is nicely understated as Tick, carrying the show's driving storyline, the quest to be reunited with his son in Alice Springs.

The show's real heart comes from Tony Sheldon, as the recently-bereaved former diva Bernadette.

A show that includes dancing paintbrushes can't really expect to be taken too seriously, so it's probably no surprise that it struggles to find the right note in softer moments.

But the best of these undoubtedly come from the Bernadette and her desert gentleman Bob, endearingly played by Bill Hunter.

There's no question though, top billing in this show should really go to costume designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner.

The duo who won an Oscar for their work on the 1994 film added a couple of zeroes to the budget for the stage reincarnation.

The results are extraodinary. Think World of Wearable Arts goes disco. Think Cirque du Soleil meets Moulin Rouge.

When performers topple across stage in a six-foot headdresses, singing "It took all the strength I had not to fall apart," it's hard not to believe it.

Even the set centrepiece - broken-down bus Priscilla herself - seems to fade into the background compared to their fantastic creations.

The difficulty of staging a musical about drag queens - who lip sync rather than sing - is avoided by the use of the three divas, who are dangled on wires from above to provide the voices for the queen's when they're 'on stage'.

While impressive vocally, they are sometimes a visual distraction from the action below.

The stage version includes more than a few new songs from the movie - some for continuity, but some apparantly just for the opportunity for silliness.

Never has there been a more contrived excuse for a song than the lead-in to MacArthur Park (cue dancing cupcakes with umbrellas).

Yes, plain silly, but such good fun with it.

Even allowing for a forgiving and lubricated opening-night crowd, the warm standing ovation was well-deserved.

*What did you think of Priscilla? Post your comments below.

- © Fairfax NZ News