Review: Priscilla

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical 
Michael Cassel Group and Nullabor Productions in association with MGM on Stage
30 January 2018
Regent Theatre
priscillathemusical.com.au

David Harris, Tony Sheldon, Euan Doidge. Priscilla Queen Of The Desert. Photo by Sam Tabone Getty Images

As a commercial film-to-juke-box musical. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical remains a high kick above the rest. Based on the 1994 film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the live show was developed in Australia in 2006 and has been beyond the empty outback to 29 countries and 134 cities, including New York and London. The universal language of dance pop, body waxing and sequins travels well.

For its tenth anniversary Tick (David Harris), Bernadette (Tony Sheldon, who has played the role all over the world and is heading to 2000 performances) and Felicia (Euan Doidge) are back on the bus and have pulled up in Melbourne before heading to Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Tick is Mitzi most nights in a Kings Cross drag club until his secret ex-wife invites him to bring a show to the Alice Springs Casino where she works. He's joined by former Les Girls star and transgender woman Bernadette and young performer Adam/Felicia and the trio drive an old bus, called Priscilla, from Sydney to the centre. Shenanigins follow as deep-bush meets inner-city, sass and sparkle reject hate, and chosen families create warm fuzzies.

Stephan Elliot's 1994 film did so much for bringing queer stories to the screen and popular narratives. It confronted assumptions, celebrated inner-city Sydney's queer community (when it was still called a gay community), increased queer visibility, and helped drag drag out of its not-so-comfortable portrayal of women with a super-fabulous leap of bloody-bonza-Aussie-original-fabulousness with Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner's costume designs.

It also addressed violence, rejection, shame and hate and has an undertone of fear, bitterness and melancholy that makes it so much more than a flag-waving story about everyone being fabulous.

Twenty-three years later, Australia reminded us that we're still striving for fabulous and that queer communities and families are still considered different by a boringly-large chunk of the country – not just the bush bogans on stage – and our government.

This show welcomes updated technology to add to the outrageous colour, sparkle and Brian Thomson's bus design – and Chappel and Gardiner's costumes are still magnificently witty – but how amazing would it be to see the show updated to reflect Australia here and now? What if it confronted the problematic beneath the sparkle?

I don't understand why shows like this are so often stuck in a time and not updated beyond Kylie songs – there's a lot more Kylie in it now.

Priscilla is fun. The cast are amazing and its broad appeal that tones down sex and makes violence safe with a dance number guarantees success. If commercial theatre is about making money, it's the most successful Australian show around.

This same success seems to make it easy to ignore, or joke away, its problems – especially those that laugh at the very communities it claims to be celebrating.

The lesbian jokes would have felt awkward and dated in the 1970s, and there are trans jokes that are even older and more ignorant. Winking to the audience that "Uluru is sacred" only re-enforces the  unacceptable references to "Ayers Rock" and celebrating the offensive act of climbing it. And for the love-of-not-being-horrible, why keep the Asian, German and Scottish stereotypes – and the Australian ones? This is a show about love and acceptance that encourages laughing at difference.

Tick, Bernadette and Felicia don't make safe choices to find happiness. They risk violence, hate and rejection. It's sad that their show makes safe choices to risk what? Risk offending people who don't like theatre that makes them think for a moment?

The Midsumma festival is also on in Melbourne. There are shows that celebrate queer artists and queer stories and don't smooth away anything that isn't comfortable to acknowledge. If you're going to see Priscilla, make sure you see at least one Midsumma show as well.

Review: Faith Healer

Faith Healer
Melbourne Theatre Company
9 March 2017
The Sumner
to 8 April
mtc.com.au

Paul Blackwell. Faith Healer. Photo by Jeff Busby.

Faith Healer, directed by Judy Davis, at Sydney’s Belvoir last year was so successful that the MTC put it into the Sumner Theatre. While twice as many can see it each night, most can’t experience the intimacy that made it so successful and the production struggles to find its strength in the large space.

Irish playwright Brian Friel’s play of four monologues only lasted for 20 performances on Broadway (with James Mason) in 1979 but has since gone on to scoff at those first reviews and opinions.

In the 1950s, Irish faith healer Francis “The Fantastic” Hardy (Colin Friels) travelled through Wales, Scotland and Ireland with his wife, maybe mistress, Grace (Alison Whyte), and manager-cum-dogsbody Teddy (Paul Blackwell). As their monologues coincide in time, the audience can imagine them together and find their own truths, which sit somewhere between comforting and devastating.

Moving from places including village halls, a desolate roadside, and a pub that’s more of a lounge bar, they remember more about death than healing. And their memories are shaped by the conscious and unconscious tweaks that create a story that can settle in their own psyches, no matter how broken or blackened, and help them make the only choices that feel right for them.

Friels holds his emotion tightly with a heavy physicality that makes Francis feel every movement as pain. Whyte leads with Grace’s heart and shares the emotion that lets us into her thoughts. Blackwell’s Teddy connects with the audience as he also sees the couple from an outsider’s perspective and because he survives by finding the awkward humour that offers much-needed space to breath and reflect.

But while they talk to us, we don’t know who “we” are. We’re not Francis’s “fictions” or “despairing people” wanting to be healed or to give up on hope. Are they talking to judge, jury, friends, strangers or gods? Are we listening to a confession or a yarn?

This is questioned more as most of the audience have little direct connection the stage. Brian Thomson’s design of an empty town hall engulfed by storm clouds (that subtly change colour and mood with Verity Hampson’s lighting) is clearly made for Belvoir. So much that ther’s a Belvoir-shaped thrust staged and a couple dozen of the luckiest punters get to sit on the extra seats around this stage. But while most of the audience were so close in Belvoir, I felt too distanced in the closest third of the seating bank.

If post-show chat is anything to go by, those close and centre had a much more engaging evening, but it left me watching performances and listening to words rather than being so lost in the memories of the characters that their pain was felt.

This was on AussieTheatre.comaussietheatre.com.

Review: The King and I

The King and I

Opera Australia and John Frost

12 June 2014

Princess Theatre

to August 2014

thekingandimusical.com.au

Photo by Oliver Toth

This production of The King and I was first seen in 1991 in Adelaide. It toured Australia and found its way to New York in 1996, where it won some Tonys, and to London in 2000. It was a lavish, extravagant re-working of the Rogers and Hammerstein's 1950s Broadway hit – and still is.

There's not much that hasn't been said about the Brian Thomson's set and Roger Kirk's costumes, which won a couple of those Tonys. The Thai-influenced, outrageously sparklie, elephants-on-the-stage, hoop-skirted, bare-chested, gold, gold and gold stage is magnificent. It's an impression of 1860s Bangkok that could only exist on a music theatre stage.

As this story might only be able to exist on a music theatre stage. Based on a book that's based on a semblance of truth, the "I" is a colonial English woman (Anna) brought to Bangkok by the King of Siam (Thailand)) to teach English to his many wives and children. She's very fish-out-of-water in her massively-hooped frocks and educated ways, but loves the bare-footed women and children she teaches and somehow earns the respect of the King, who is determined to bring his country into the Western world without sacrificing his absolute power.

Jason Scott Lee joyfully embraces the clown and the confused heart of the King, if not the fear connected to his power, and Lisa McCune ensures that Mrs Anna is his match and equal. McCune brings a subtlety and contemporary understanding that creates depth to the more thinly-written moments and her scenes with Shu-Cheen Yu (first wife, Lady Thiang), especially, acknowledge and challenge the perception of the world that created this work.

No matter how exquisite the design, talented the cast or adorable the children, it's impossible not to look at this The King and I from a 2014 Australian perspective and ask the unavoidable: "Why here, why now?".

The work still presents the Thai people with a 1950s mix of exoticism and barbarism; the dialogue's still generic Asian, can't-pronounce-R, broken English; and the laughs come from the Thai people mis-understanding the British/American culture. Despite its intent, The King and I still has some awkward moments that feel a bit like politely listening to Grandpa tell an off joke because he doesn't know better.

If the book and story were presented without the song and dance, would it be applauded or even accepted? And could this production tour to South East Asia and open in Bangkok? I think no and no. So, of all the works that could have been produced, why this one?

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Shane Warne: The Musical

Shane Warne: The Musical
Token Events and TrafficLight
11 December 2008
Athenaeum Theatre

I didn’t care for or about Shane Warne before the musical, and I still don’t, but Eddie Perfect can SMS me any time.

Perfect wrote this great Aussie musical and stars as its fallen hero. Being as Aussie as beetroot on a burger, Shane Warne: The Musical might not make a Broadway away tour, and it’s no good taking it to the West End, cos the poms will just whinge about it – but every Australian state, city and medium-sized country town deserves a leg of the tour.

We all know Warnie – he’s either the greatest spin bowler Australia’s yet to produce (don’t worry if you’re cricket illiterate, there’s a scene that explains that stuff) or he’s that twat who cheated on his missus, couldn’t give up smoking and was tempted by Indian bribes. Shane eventually grasps that these two parts of himself are connected, and is forced to accept, “I’ll never be captain, so I guess that’s that then”. He helped bring back the ashes, but his personal life ruined any chance he had of being a real hero.

Warnie’s the archetypal anti-hero, with his larrikin faults and inability to say no to temptation.  If Perfect and Co had pulverised him, it wouldn’t be fair to Shane; if they’d ignored his foibles, it wouldn’t be fair to us. Shane Warne: The Musical keeps hitting sixes with a remarkable balance of satire and celebration.

And, to be fair, it also takes the piss out of musical theatre, with numbers reminiscent of stage and screen favourites from Fame to Godspell to Sweeney Todd (it was “fucking beautiful” ) – and who knew AIS was even more fan to dance-spell than YMCA.

Warnie in song works so well because ultimately the jokes on us. Perfect makes us look at ourselves and how we all supported and created the spin around the spin. As the marketing chorus sing, “Everyone’s a little bit like Shane”. We can’t blame him for being just like us.

With a such an impressive creative team around Perfect – director Neil Armfield (demi-god of Australian directing), dramaturge Casey Benneto (Keating), choreographer Gideon Obarzanek (Chunky Move) and designer Brian Thomson (shows too numerous to mention, but this the design is reminiscent of his original Rocky Horror set) –  it would have been disappointing if Shane Warne: The Musical wasn’t this good. It proves that sometimes it’s a damn good idea to let those arty-farty types loose on a commercial show.

Perfect lives up to his name as Warne and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when he’s had enough, as the show is very dependent on his appeal. The rest of the on-stage team are bonza, with Rosemarie Harris a standout as Simone.

Shane Warne: The Musical will become as legendary as its namesake. It’s not a celebration of Warne the cricketer or a gut-punch to Shane the man. It lets you laugh at him, laugh with him and ultimately cack yourself because his ridiculous, media-controlled, fame-driven life led to a Melbourne-based cabaret performer writing a musical all about it.


A note for patrons more used to stadiums
Last night there were a number of Warnie fans in the audience who didn’t get the concept of live theatre. It’s not like the MCG. Getting up in the middle of the first half (or “act”) and coming back into the theatre with beer for your mates isn’t acceptable “theatre” behaviour – and it just encouraged other blokes to do the same. Please wait for half time (or “interval”) and don’t do it again in the second half. Or, at least, come back with enough beers for the people sitting near you!



 This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com