The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert

At Princess of Wales Theatre until January 2

reviewed by Ron Singer

How does a musical with a very gay sensibility and featuring drag queens manage to become an enormous popular hit, catering primarily to a well-heeled audience who, while not necessarily homophobic, would under normal circumstances probably not choose shows about gays and most definitely not about drag queens??

Well, folks, that was the question I kept asking myself…and then I saw this Toronto mega hit production that has already been a ‘humongous’ success in Australia and is about to take Broadway by storm, immediately following this already highly successful Toronto run.

This musical stage version of the somewhat cultish and seminal Australian film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert, is based, story-wise, on the movie and does in fact use several of the movie’s well known and extremely popular disco-oriented tunes, such as I Love the Nightlife and Shake Your Groove Thing with many other up-tempo original tunes.

The story, in brief, is set in the Australian outback and concerns a young gay drag queen performer who had fathered a child prior to opting for the gay-only lifestyle and subsequently leaving his wife. We pick up the narrative a number of years later, when the child in question, Benjamin, tells his Mom that he’d genuinely like to see the Father he never really knew and the long separated, but reasonably friendly parents agree that father and son should meet in remote Alice Springs. And the rest, as they say, is showbiz, as the father and his band of merry drag queens sing and dance their way across the desert to their ultimate destination of Alice Springs.

I had some difficulty at first understanding some of the dialogue and if you’re very familiar with the Aussie accent, you’ll take offence with how badly two of the cast in particular handle that task. However, the one actor who is the worst offender in the accent department happens to be the best singer/dancer in the company, so he is easily forgiven.

Very much like in other cult productions, The Rocky Horror Show for example, where some of the audience know the story, dialogue and music and thus, occasionally join in, joyous sounds of recognition by some of the Priscilla cognescienti pepper the scenes in this show as well.

Harking back to my original question, what is it about this musical that makes it attractive to an all-encompassing audience? Well, to put it in simplest and most succinct terms, this show grows on you. It transcends the world of drag primarily because of the touching and extremely sentimental story, the strong acting, the brilliant singing and dancing, the very recognizable, popular, driving, rhythmic and infectious disco music, with tunes that you can hum and with lyrics you can remember, and to cap it all off, there are the many spectacular, glitzy, eccentric costumes and set pieces.

Additionally, this production has a most unusual-looking chorus, featuring every size and shape of performer. This is truly a “different’ musical than most and definitely an audience-pleasing spectacle. In fact, the jam-packed audience clearly not only grew to like or even love the characters and their very idiosyncratic behaviour, they stood as one at the curtain calls to repeatedly applaud and loudly cheer the delighted company.

About Ron Singer: Artistic Director Emeritus of The Randolph Academy of the Performing Arts, former Chair of the Department of Theatre at York University, former entertainment critic (CFRB Radio and Standard Broadcast News), and former  arts and entertainment reporter (CBC Variety Tonight). We’re honoured to have Ron with us.

Legally Blonde

Bubble-gum Musical

Princess of Wales Theatre until August 8

Reviewed by Ron Singer

LEGALLY BLONDE is a bubble gum, feel-good musical designed for an audience who want reasonably mindless musical  spectacles. Disclosure; I saw this production on Broadway, prior to its move to Toronto – so I can include general highlights of the production, but can’t comment on the performances of the Toronto stage brigade.

The story and plot are reasonably simplistic; a very pretty, high-energy and bright blonde girl is dumped by her Harvard-bound boyfriend because he believes that she comes across like a “dumb blonde”. So, she decides to also go to Harvard in order to show him that not all blondes deserve the “dumb” label.

At Harvard, naturally, she succeeds at all levels academically, socially and romantically and more than proves her point:, namely, don’t let appearances fool you, or you can’t tell a book by its cover.  The NY acting varied from strong to schticky, except for the two dogs in the production whose acting was outstanding. And there are some up tempo tuneful songs and lots of energetic, well choreographed dances.

Legally Blonde is a well-produced, fun entertainment over-all, but as saccharined and artificial as cotton candy, and just about as Barbie Doll colourful. Nevertheless, I’ll admit that I actually enjoyed it for what it is: a fun, uptempo, but mindless, Valley Girl mentality musical. And the many, many prepubescent girls and their mothers in the audience, for whom this production is perfectly geared, seemed to be eating it up, so to speak.

About Ron Singer: Artistic Director Emeritus of The Randolph Academy of the Performing Arts, former Chair of the Department of Theatre at York University, former entertainment critic (CFRB Radio and Standard Broadcast News), and former  arts and entertainment reporter (CBC Variety Tonight). We’re honoured to have Ron with us.