BWW Reviews: PRISCILLA at the Paramount is One Big Spectacle with No Heart

OK Broadway Producers, we need to have a chat. I understand your need to turn every mildly successful movie into a big flashy Broadway Musical in hopes that the name recognition will sell tickets. And I understand that "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", currently on tour and playing at the Paramount, was ripe for the picking to be a huge spectacle on stage. But if you're going to take a beloved film with tons of pride and heart then at least do the story justice when you do it instead of the pandering and forced version of the story I saw last night.

For those that haven't seen the movie (and you'd be better off catching that over this) we follow three drag performers, Tick, Adam and Bernadette (Wade McCollum, BRyan West and Scott Willis) as they trek across the Australian outback in a broKen Down bus (dubbed Priscilla) in order to perform at a remote casino as a favor to the manager. Along the way, friendships are forged and secrets are revealed as they encounter the gamut of acceptance from celebrations of their lifestyle to outright homophobia. And the trio performs their routines during the trip for the locals they encounter with varying degrees of success.

But beyond the glitz, falsies and catty remarks, the original movie managed to create three rich and empathetic characters each with their own heartfelt sub plot much to the credit of the original writer and director, Stephan Elliott and his amazing cast. And so it's all the more confusing that book writer of the musical Elliott along with Allan Scott chose to strip-mine the barest of bones of his story and all of the good one liners from the movie and leave that richness and heart behind, forsaking the story for jamming in completely out of context musical numbers. It seems the pop numbers from the original were not enough and so they had to mine the billboard charts for even more in order to show off more costumes. Furthermore they gutted the story of its charm and added in more dick jokes and character elements making the trio completely unsympathetic. Tick, we find, hasn't seen his son in 6 years and is always breaking promises to him (a fact we discover at the top of the show rather than finding out he has a son later in the movie as a big reveal). Bernadette seems not at all bereft at the sudden death of her boyfriend and chooses to make jokes about him and do a big flashy number ON his coffin. And Adam seems to be nothing more then a muscle bound party flake. And speaking of muscles, they've also chosen to infuse the show with a bevy of half naked muscle boys and while I'm all for the eye candy (and let me say there were a lot of very pretty boys to look at) it was just so gratuitous and pandering in order to make up for the lack of substance.

The cast does what they can and are obviously talented but even they, as a whole, seem to have been directed to make every number, move, gesture, and line as big and grandiose as possible and force it all down the audience's throat. There is no subtlety to any of the performances making sure that every mugging moment is in your face and devoid of heart.

And it was that constant boisterous attitude that almost became insulting as the pandering nature of the show devolved into a mélange of "let's laugh at the gays for two and a half hours. Aren't drag queens funny?" They even make a point in the show (as a kind of drag 101 lesson) that drag performers need to accentuate all their moves and expressions since they're lip-syncing to someone else's song. But any good drag performer knows that there's still room for nuance and they may be bigger than life on stage but that doesn't mean they're like that at all times during daily life.

So if you're in the mood for a big flashy performance of old pop songs with some outrageous costumes, you're in for a treat. But if, like me, you love the big and flashy but also love the original story and the beauty of the relationships, then stay home and re-watch the movie. I wish I had.

"Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" performs at the Paramount Theatre through November 17th. For tickets or information visit the Seattle Theatre Group online at www.stgpresents.org.

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

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