Priscilla Queen of the Desert

After a two year hiatus, Priscilla the Bus finally made it to the Tivoli stage – and my goodness it was worth the wait. Under Victoria Cowan and Ewen Ritchie’s expert direction the large cast gave us faultless acting, singing and dancing full of exuberance and laughter but also moments of pathos handled with great sensitivity. The three leading men/ladies were magnificent each in their own way but also worked well together, making the growing friendship between the characters as they journeyed from Sydney to Ayres Rock truly believable. Callum Anderson played the young, carefree, reckless (and bitchy) Adam/Felicia to perfection and his rendition of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was superb. Alasdair Corbett too gave a perfect performance as Tick/Mitzi torn between his life as a drag queen and his desire to be a father to his son Benji (Daniel McKay) and the scene between the two toward the end of Act Two when they sang “Always On My Mind/Say A Little Prayer” was extremely touching. Alasdair’s strong singing voice was shown at it’s best in his rendition of “MacArthur Park”. Craig Pike as the transgender, more experienced Bernadette was truly believable in the part handling the bitchy put downs with Adam/Felica and the burgeoning love for Bob the Mechanic (strongly played by Scott Jamieson) with consummate ease. Strong support was given by Stephanie Longmuir-Smith (Marion, Tick’s wife), Kyra Rostron (Shirley the love hungry bar owner), Stephen Summers (Miss Understanding/Young Bernadette) and Laura Pike (the hilariously funny Cynthia). Rhianne Armstrong, Laura Burnett and Tanya Read gave excellent musical support as the backing singing Divas. The score is full of disco classics too numerous to mention but among the highlights performed by the full company for me were “Colour My World” and the Act One finale “I Will Survive” and in Act Two “Boogie Wonderland” and “We Belong”. The costumes were colourful and delightfully over the top as one would expect from such a camp show and were carried off to great effect especially by the three leading characters – they must have had three of the best pairs of legs in the theatre! The nine piece band under Ewen Ritchie’s conducting, handled the score flawlessly. The set was by necessity simple as Priscilla took up a large part of the stage but the changes, including the manoeuvring of the bus, were smoothly handled. Congratulations to everyone involved both on and off stage – you were truly deserving of the prolonged applause and standing ovation!

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