Review: PRICILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT: THE MUSICAL at Unicorn Theatre

Unicorn Theatre's production of PRICILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT: THE MUSICAL comes just in time for Pride Month and reminds everyone of the joys of being your authentic self with a "journey to the heart of fabulous!"

Based on the movie by Stephan Elliot, PRICILLA follows three drag queens as they travel across the Outback in a refurbished school bus. Marion (Laura Jacobs) is the one who thinks up the journey when she tells her husband, drag queen Tick/Mitzi, (Francisco Javier Villegas) to come meet his son (Aiden DeLaHunt-Villegas) and perform at her casino. Tick enlists the help of two of his other drag queen friends, the retired and regal Bernadette (Ron MeGee) and the absolutely fabulous Felicia/Adam (Dashawn Young) to come with him.

Along the way, the audience is delighted with several performances from the drag queens with familiar songs such as "It's Raining Men," "I Will Survive," and "Shake Your Groove Thing." While the men do provide some of their own well-trained vocals, historically drag queens lip-sync to track sung by women, so the show had a trio of divas singing a lot of the songs. Colleen Grate, Shon Ruffin, and Lexi Poindexter's voices blew me away. Their vibrato and ability to belt was truly impressive that I felt bad that the focus was supposed to be on the drag queens' dancing when it was them singing. But the dancing was very entertaining, which helped to pull the focus towards the drag queens. Also the elaborate costumes

Jon Fulton Adams and Wayne Potter created along with the fabulous wigs designed by Ryan Webster were so gorgeous together. I would also like to enlist whoever did Villegas's eye makeup to come do mine daily.

The outrageous and sometimes crude one-liners had the audience rolling in their seats, and the bus with its leopard-printed seats gave the show a lot of charm. But it isn't just fun dance numbers; it has heart and soul and reminds us that there were so many people integral to the LGBTQ+ community getting our rights, and while society has come so far, we've still got some hearts to change.

PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT: THE MUSICAL plays at Unicorn through the 25th. For tickets go to http://www.unicorntheatre.org/?page=home.

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