Pricilla, Queen of the Desert

For those who do not know, Pricilla is the name of the bus used to carry two drag queens and a transgender woman across Australia heading to Alice Springs to perform in a casino run by the wife of one of the drag-queens, Tick, and to re-introduce him to his son. 

 The show has something of a cult following, and was obviously enjoyed by the majority of the almost capacity audience at this large theatre, which can only ever be a wonderful thing and a many congratulations to the cast –  for bringing this glittering spectacle to the amateur stage.  In fact, I would say that it is perhaps the most technically challenging show on the amateur circuit at the moment and, as expected, Preston Musical Comedy Society rose to the challenge with aplomb and surpassed all expectations.

Somewhat unusually for me, I am going to start with the technical aspects – the whole thing had a real glitz about it, I was more than usually irritated by the roving lights in the audience particularly as at the beginning as it left people working on the stage only semi-lit, whilst the audience were very well lit, but that was very much my personal view.  The manoeuvring of the bus was truly excellent – and the wheels actually turning just added to the overall effect.

It felt like the entire cast had to change costumes every 5 minutes or so, which I know was not actually the case, but there were an awful lot of costume changes, each one more outlandish and fantastic than the last - paint brushes to cakes to one apparently easy move, which were handled absolutely superbly, there must have been a small army of people backstage to accomplish this, not to mention the space required to house all those costumes, and the whole cast and crew are to be heartily congratulated for achieving all of this so very seamlessly.

One very small and picky point, the section where the three disappeared behind a curtain, and on one pass of the curtain appear in different a different costume did not quite work as on a couple of occasions one set of three were moving before the curtain closed which really spoiled the illusion.  

I am not sure you can talk about of ‘chorus’ for this show they really are more of an ensemble, but they flounced and danced their way across Australia with obvious enjoyment both on their part and on that of the audience, so that must be ‘mission accomplished’.

The three Divas sang well in the main – but I would have liked to see them more differentiated, from the rest of the cast in more than just their costumes.

Once more on a personal level, I was not really convinced by the relationship between the three central characters of Tick, Felicia and Bernadette although their energy and enthusiasm was beyond question.

To work this show demands a real party atmosphere and you achieved that – in spades.  Your carried your audience along with you every single step and shimmy of the way and rose and surpassed every expectation.   Well done to all concerned for a most interesting evening out and for truly entertaining your audience who were on their feet clapping along – Mission definitely accomplished!

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