At the start of the show we see Mitzi Mitosis, who goes by the nickname Tick, performing at a club in Sydney when his wife Marion, whom he has been separated from for several years, because of his homosexuality, calls him and asks and asks for a favour.
Marion asks Tick if he will perform his cabaret show at her entertainment venue in Alice Springs for a few weeks. Marion tells him that there is also another reason why she would like hm to come up. Their eight years old son Benji wants to meet him.
Tick puts Marion ‘on hold’, ends up chat things over with fellow drag Farrah, and then gets back to Marion telling her that he will do it. Tick recruits a few of his best friends to join him on the trip up north- transsexual Bernadette who only recently lost her husband, and drag queen Felicia.
The newly formed trio go on to buy a ‘budget Barbie camper-van’ they nickname ‘Priscilla Queen Of The Desert’ and so starts their journey up to the Alice.
This show, now doing a tenth anniversary tour, directed by its original director Simon Phillips, is a great musical theatre package with impressive sets and props, great music, lots of dancing, quirky characters and zippy dialogue weaved into a storyline about LGBTQI people being true to themselves and having fun despite having to face disapproval and sometimes aggressive acts against them.
We walk into the theatre greeted by a rough sketch of a map of Australia with the trek up to Alice lit up. Also when looking around the theatre we see bows adorning the statutes looking down on us- a nice touch.
From the moment the first number ‘It’s Raining Men’ starts and we get the three divas coming down from the rafters we are carried along by this feel good iconically Australian musical. (In what other musical would you see a hotel being named the ‘Woop Woop Hotel’!).
Everyone will come away from the show with their own selection of highlights. These were mine…
Tony Sheldon as Bernadette coming up stage and saying ‘I’ve always wanted to sing this’ and then going on to do a bit of Richard Harris’ classic operatic pop song ‘MacArthur Park’.
The scenes where the troupe enter the real outback west like Broken Hill and the underground mining town Coober Pedy and you can just feel the tension in the air when a hefty, old battle-axe of a woman greets them and tells them that, ‘our town don’t want your kind of people here’. She is proved wrong!
The first ;interactive’ scene after interval with the Company doing a raucous version of John Denver’s classic ‘Thank God I’m A County Boy’ and welcoming a few lucky people from, the audience on stage to bop along.
With all its glorious irreverence the show did have its tender moments such as the scenes between David Harris as Tick and George Holohan-Cantwell as Benji as they get to know each other. Tick is anxious that Benji won’t accept his lifestyle, and is appreciative when his son is not judgmental. I loved the simplicity of the scene where we see Benji just hanging out and using a blowing bubbles machine, doing simple, unaffected kids stuff amongst all the complicated adult shtick.
If you go and see the show you will not only survive you will have a great night out. Recommended, PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT – THE MUSICAL is booking presently until Saturday 21st July. From Sydney the show moves to Adelaide’s Festival Theatre where performances commence from Sunday 19th August, 2018.
Performance times are Tuesdays 7pm, Wednesdays 1pm and 7.30pm, Thursdays 7.30pm, Fridays 7.30pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 7.30pm, and Sundays at 3pm (select performances only).
http://priscillathemusical.com.au