There are a lot of miles in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”
The Aurora Fox production of the road-trip musical “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” took a wee detour a couple of weekends back. Citing safety issues, the venue postponed for a week the opening of the show about two drag queens and a trans woman performer who head to Australia’s outback.
musical
All the high-heel-strutting and breakneck costume changes taking place near one massive (for the Fox’s intimate stage)
bus required some tweaking.
When the show opened last Friday, it still had some things in common show’s titular lead— the aforementioned bus with a side cutaway. Mechanical glitches dogged it but could not grind to a halt the joys— and sorrows — of the ride.
It’s likely that by nowthe sound and lighting issues have been resolved. It’s also possible that Todd Peckham, who portrays the lead character, Tick/Mitzi, has found his comfort zone. Opening night, itwas hard to separate Tick’s awareness that he is at best a so-so drag queen from Peckham’s own tentative singing and uneven acting. While Tick isn’t the only character that makes “Priscilla,” well, tick, he is the emotional engine that sets the trio on their adventure.
Things get started when Tick/ Mitzi makes a promise to the young son he has yet to meet. Under rather false pretenses, he ropes two friends into a journey for a gig at Aussie tourist destination Alice Springs. On board: fellow drag performer Adam/Felicia and old friend Bernadette, a faded star and recently widowed transgender woman.
Although this is a regional premiere, the story of Tick/Mitzi, Adam/Felicia and Bernadette has quite a fewmiles on it. In 1994, Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott adapted Elliott’s 1994 Australian indie movie “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” into amusical. Themusical’s trek began in Australia in 2006, wending itsway to Broadway in 2011, where itwon a Tony for costumes.
From the road trip’s outset, Felicia and Bernadette duel over gender identity. For his part, Tick/Mitzi is just trying to get to his son and his son’s mother (playedwithwarmth by Harrison Lyles-Smith andMelissaMorris respectively) without letting on that this is the trip’s endpoint.
Rob Riney brings an appealing tenor to his portrayal of Felicia. A young but imperious drag queen, Felicia doesn’t work hard to camouflage maleness. Her cattiness serves as a reminder that claws— and a whole lot of drag artifice— can be defensive. All Felicia’s fab frippery and damn-the-torpedoes repartee puts the armor in glamour. (OK, OK, you get my drift.)
Lacy does tender work as Bernadette, whose world weariness has been earned. Once a star in Australia’s legendary Les Girls revue, Bernadette was a “female impersonator” because that was the limit of the understanding at the time.
Of course, how we talk about LGBT identity and drag has matured since the movie made such a splash in ’94. Not to overstate the advances, but cultural familiarity with the lives of transgendered folk has deepened even in the brief time between the Denver Center’s ebullient 2013 national tour and this production.
The show’s fresh nuance is most evident in Lacy’s performance of Bernadette, who was played in the movie (nearly indelibly) by Terence Stamp. Lacy brings the heartache, to be sure. She has a biting way with an observation, too. But the actress foregrounds something quietly nurturing, not existentially tragic. And when actor Mark Rubald makes a winning appearance as Bob, a mechanic who was enraptured as a young man by Les Girls, Bernadette’s hope for romance feels more layered than it has in previous versions.
Eden Lane likely had a hand in her Lacy’s choices. Fresh from a role in Harvard’s ART (American Repertory Theatre) production of “Trans Scripts”— Paul Lucas’ interview-play featuring seven transwomen— Lane makes a promising Denver debut as a director/choreographer in the town inwhich she has made a living as an arts and culture journalist.
There are unfilled potholes in this journey to a father-and-son reunion, but there’s poignant and bawdy fun to be had, too. The gravesite dancing in “Don’t LeaveMe ThisWay” teases the mournful and the ecstatic. A scene of Felicia running from bashers toward the audience is clever and cinematic. Tashara May, Se les Van H us sand Kris angela Washington make intermittent, slinky appearances as the Divas (think girl group as quasi-Greek chorus). And the number featuring a tough bar maid who “loves the nightlife” was an audience favorite, not least for Sharon KayWhite’s scenery-chewing aplomb. “Got to boogie,” indeed.