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Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
By: Jason Pollock
Priscilla: "Poignant and insightful"
Priscilla: "Poignant and insightful"
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is sheer spectacle.
Although the opening scenes are superficial enough - a troop of Sydney drag queens moaning about their boring lives - a masterful two hours of showmanship underlies a poignant and insightful biopic of our struggle for gay rights.
Unless you are one of the few who missed the movie, the storyline will be etched into your gaydar. A tired and irascible trio of queens embark on a bus trip to just another gig in Aussie hicksville, Alice Springs, an outback town which God plopped right in the middle of Australia and then forgot about.
Unbeknown to our heroines they are about to undertake a voyage of self-discovery and witness the emergence in each of them of the humanity hidden deep beneath the superficially of their humdrum bitchy lives.
Their home for several weeks, a Technicolor dream coach with a will of its own called Priscilla, trundles them through the homophobic horrors of the Aussie outback and adventures which will change their lives forever.
This musical fantasy is true spectacle in all its rainbow glory. Simon Philips’s brilliant production throws every theatrical trick in the book at an astounded audience with oodles of rip-roaring gay abandon and all set to a soundtrack of anthems we came out to: “Hot Stuff”, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, “I Say A Little Prayer” and enough Kylie to satisfy diehard fans. Oh, and Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner’s creative costumes are so outrageous and over the top they would make Busby Berkley turn in his grave with envy. This is drag with a vengeance!
Jason Donavan as Mitzi finally lets his feminine side out to passable effect, and the anguished trannie Bernadette is gloriously played by Tony Sheldon. But for my money the big star of Priscilla is Oliver Thornton as Felicia. She minces, she bitches and she throws herself into desperate danger with the ignorant redneck outback folk but in the end emerges as the caring person she never knew she could be.
Priscilla, Queen of The Desert is at The Palace Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London
08447550016
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