Ladies Please!

Well we all knew I was going to go to Priscilla Queen of the Desert sooner or later, didn’t we? I’m not really one for musicals, in fact aside from Hairspray at Christmas (and we’ll gloss over Bad Girls) the only other one I’ve been to is Prisoner Cell Block H. The Freak was fantastic, and so was Lily Savage, but I’m pleased to say that Priscilla is EVEN BETTER!!

There’s a part of me that thinks it’s just about bringing drag to a straight audience so they don’t have to actually mix with the dirty queers, but then on the other hand it is an amazing production and that’s the only way to acquire such a huge budget, without which the staging would be impossible. It must have cost a FORTUNE.

The costumes are AMAZING – from the feather headgear to the bell-bottom-trouser-shoes; the set is FABULOUS – especially the fur-lined bus, which changes from being a silver bus into a bright pink neon one halfway through the first act … and I was pleased to see the script hasn’t been toned down to make it family friendly. There are plenty of put downs and camp in-jokes, and it’s all very unashamedly GAY.

Tony Sheldon as Bernadette and Oliver Thornton as Adam both fit their roles perfectly, and the ensemble cast are all fantastic, the only slightly weak link is Jason Donovan.

I don’t have a problem with his acting, but he just makes a REALLY BAD drag queen. I’d have thought looking good in a frock would have been a prerequisite, but he looks like your dad at a fancy dress ball or, to steal a line from the production, like a cock in a frock.

He's fine during the husband and kid bits, but for some of the other stuff I kept thinking that oh, I don’t know … maybe someone like Alan Cumming would have made a better job of it. I’m sure he could pull of an Australian accent.

Highlights? Ooh, there are lots of them, but the best bit has to be Adam’s clip from La Traviata. He performs it inside a giant shoe on top of the bus which, as the track goes on, extends forwards above the front rows of the audience with a long silver trail flapping along behind it.

Some of the scenes in the bus are hilarious, I always love the bit when Bernadette is driving and takes the piss out of the other twos' dreary conversation, “Gee, poor Kevin's dick. There can't be much room down there with his brain taking up so much space already, HNNNEEERRRRRR.”

There are just two teeny tiny disappointments - one is that ping pong toting Cynthia doesn’t really shoot the ping pongs from her lady garden, and the other is that although there are two dancers in these amazing dragon costumes with pop up wings and 80s-pop-group-Cameo-esque codpieces, they don’t crawl out on stage looking evil like they do in the film version.

I was glad I booked for the matinee as, relating back to my earlier comments, there were lots of excitable ladies on the way out, wrapped in their new pink feather boas singing ABBA songs. I overheard one lot saying they were going to book to come back for so-and-so’s hen night. "We’ll all get dressed up, go for a few drinks first and get a limo to drop us off." I perish at the thought of how sitting next to that could damage, beyond repair, a perfectly good evening.

If I go back I’m going to get four people and book a box next time … I might go when Jason Donovan’s on holiday.