Priscilla is in town - and she's far from a drag.
Drag queens in full regalia mill about among the more -prosaically attired punters outside that grandest of old drag queens, the Civic Theatre, for the opening night that everyone who ever loved to get togged up in a “cozzie” has been waiting for. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert has arrived in town. And was she worth waiting for!
As the house lights go down and the audience’s buzz subsides, the light show begins, sparkling and dancing through the auditorium, building anticipation until the curtain finally goes up revealing … Sydney Harbour Bridge, in all its glory, brilliantly lit up and crowned with performing drag queens while three divas descend from the heavens like muses.
If you loved the movie then the stage show is all that and a great deal more – for one thing, it’s twice as long. More of everything – ritzy, glitzy numbers, ravishing costumes, captivating choreography.
The basic story is the same: two drag queens and a transsexual “boldly go where no drag queen has been before” – to Alice Springs to do a show, in Priscilla, the bus, a star herself as she dances slowly but gracefully around the stage.
The inventiveness and sheer effort that have gone into the set and costumes are breathtaking. Tick’s jandal (sorry, thong) frock is a masterpiece of absurdity. In the finale, all the Aussie icons are brought to life – emus, swans, kangaroos and cane toads prance about the stage.
Bill Hunter is a lump of wood as Bob, and the father-son stuff saccharine and oh so cute. But it’s a glorious celebration of high camp, unapologetically sentimental, a warm-hearted, generous show, infectious, hilarious, and splendiferously silly.
The Threepenny Opera is a completely different phenomenon from Priscilla. In 1928, it took Berlin by storm and its most famous song, Mack the Knife, has become a classic. Set in Victorian England, it’s a story of pimps, whores and thieves.
When Peachum (a vigorous, irascible Peter Elliot), whose business is built on begging, discovers that his daughter, Polly (Amanda Billing), has married the criminal “anti-hero” Macheath (Roy Snow), he sets out to have Macheath arrested and hanged. However, Macheath has the protection of Tiger Brown (Cameron Rhodes), the chief of police and a childhood friend.
Brecht and Weill challenge not just the traditional theatre establishment (what is an acceptable subject for opera and how should it be done?) but the question of what is social justice and who is a criminal – the thief who steals, or the rich who hoard their resources? For its time, it was definitely revolutionary.
Michael Hurst’s production makes good use of Brechtian “alienation” – the artifice, the machinations of the theatre are revealed: there’s no set, the stage area is black and unadorned; the band is on stage, some members even running on after the show has begun; microphones become a deliberate device; some of the audience sits on stage, almost part of the action; and the show begins with the house lights up, reminding us we are in a theatre watching a performance.
From the opening bars of Weill’s harshly beautiful introduction to the sharply satirical energy of the happy ending, the show is musically excellent. Billing’s singing of Pirate Jenny is recklessly fierce, Snow and Rhodes’ rendition of the Cannon Song tough and compelling, and the delivery by the company of What Keeps a Man Alive electrifying.
However, the songs – music and lyrics – have stood the test of time better than the play itself. The socio-economic and gender politics feel curiously dated, and despite a raw energy, the company seem, on opening night anyway, tense and ill at ease with some of the material, although, by the finale, the production has found a style, and its feet. Snow’s characterisation of Macheath, despite some fine singing, lacks the magnetic sleaze required to fill the centre.
The tradition of German cabaret demands irony, relish in the brutality and nastiness of life. This should develop as the season progresses.