PRISCILLA: THE MUSICAL Review, Pic and Discussion Thread

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 7:32pm

The first one is in - and it's a rave!

Queen of stage spectaculars
By Simon Ferguson

October 07, 2006 12:00

AFTER months of graft, weeks of technical problems and days of panic, Australia's latest homegrown stage spectacular has arrived.

Priscilla: The Musical pushes all the same buttons as the movie did, only with more great tunes and strong singing and dancing on a breathtaking set with costumes that make the movie look beige.

The Daily Telegraph managed to get hold of a ticket for Thursday's sneak preview before tonight's official opening.

From the stunning opening scene where three airborne divas sing Downtown against a Sydney Harbour Bridge backdrop, this was three hours of powerful, high-quality eye and ear candy.





The Daily Telegraph sneaks in early

Updated On: 10/19/06 at 07:32 PM

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 8:19pm

There's also a very limited amount of tickets for tonights World Premiere.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 8:28pm

Are you attending, rosscoe?

[alterego]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 9:22pm

They need to get some photos on the website pronto!

Chookas to all concerned!

Article:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/priscilla-dragged-on-stage/2006/10/05/1159641461941.html
Updated On: 10/6/06 at 09:22 PM

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 10:12pm

Just for you, alterego, a slew of pics from the photo call:






PRISCILLA Photo Call, 10/5/06

Updated On: 10/7/06 at 10:12 PM

[alterego]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 10:33pm

Thank you Rath!

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 10:41pm

You're welcome.

[paradox_error]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 10:46pm

Oooooh! Chookas to all the cast, especially you know who!

I can't wait to see it when it comes to Brisbane!

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 10:53pm

Please add reviews as you come across them - I've got to sign off for the night.

Chookas to all involved in what looks to be a smash!

[alterego]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 11:30pm

I can see a trip up to Sydney on the horizon.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/6/06 at 11:33pm

I wish I could!

[alterego]

Posted: 10/7/06 at 11:00am

Another great review:

http://www.aussietheatre.com

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/7/06 at 11:13am

Quotes from the review alterego linked:

Finally, it’s arrived – a jukebox musical that gets it all right. Priscilla is, without doubt, the most visually spectacular and entertaining musical Australia has seen in years, and I’m now willing to believe those who say its potential is limitless.

Priscilla is indeed camp, but it’s far from a ‘gay musical’. Because apart from all the disco tunes, frocks and men dressed as women, this show has something most jukebox musicals fail to find – passion. And while this is a movie-cum-musical, it almost feels like Priscilla was always meant to find life on the stage.

Priscilla could run for years, and Sydney should very much get behind it – it’s classy, entertaining and full of life. A five-star production.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/7/06 at 1:53pm

Opening night pics!

The legendary Toni Lamond, mother of star Tony Sheldon (Ralph/Bernadette), and her sister, singer/songwriter Helen Reddy.



Click here for more!

Updated On: 10/7/06 at 01:53 PM

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/7/06 at 10:14pm

From AOL News:

Star of the movie Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Terrence Stamp left, kisses Tony Sheldon who plays Bernadette in the musical of the film during a dress rehearsal in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006. Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the musical has its world premier in Sydney on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith) (ROB GRIFFITH)

[alterego]

Posted: 10/7/06 at 10:42pm

Another:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1757980.htm

[alterego]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 7:57am

B- B- BUMP!

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 9:23am

I'm being told the pictures we're getting don't do Sheldon justice - that he looks quite beautiful and elegant. Apparently, he's 6'2" with legs for days!

Updated On: 10/8/06 at 09:23 AM

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 11:55am

The Australian is mixed, but I like the quote about "the peerless Tony Sheldon..."

Nice!
Frills and Flounces

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 8:01pm

From this mornings Variety.


SYDNEY -- As the glamazon cross-dressers of "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" stomp across the stage of the Lyric Theater this week, the producers of the new Australian jukebox musical are looking to see if those sequined platform shoes will carry them to runaway legit success.
The tuner, which cost $A7 million ($5.2 million), chalked up a healthy $4 million advance ahead of its Oct. 7 bow.

Producers Liz Koops, Gary McQuinn, John Frost and Michael Chugg have fast-tracked the show to take advantage of a lull in local live entertainment. They're banking on a long season in Sydney and the production eventually will travel throughout Oz.

Export potential, however, is key in order to justify the development cost, it being too risky to plan a production for the limited Oz market alone.International producers are even flying to Sydney to assess the offshore possibilities for "Priscilla."

Koops acquired stage rights to the 1994 film, written and directed by Stephan Elliott, who wrote the musical's book along with Allan Scott. Melbourne Theater Company artistic director Simon Phillips directs the show.

Koops says it was once too expensive to produce original musicals in Australia; now it's the only way that makes sense.

She says it's become prohibitively expensive to acquire Aussie rights to foreign hits. But with the Oz dollar worth about 75¢, new productions are comparatively cheap to develop. Also, the country has ample creative talent, and fund-raising has become easier following the success of hit tuners such as "The Boy From Oz."

Aside from "Priscilla," two other quintessentially Australian candy-colored comic films from the 1990s have been rumored for theatrical reworkings: "Muriel's Wedding" and Baz Luhrmann's "Strictly Ballroom."

The three films are light, comic and boast a soundtrack of pop faves. And each adopts a brash, larger-than-life comedic tone that should translate well to tuner mode.

Luhrmann has rejected numerous offers to sell the rights to "Ballroom," which began as a stage production at the Natl. Institute of Dramatic Arts. "Muriel's" producer Lynda House says negotiations are under way to bring that story to the stage.

Producer Dennis Smith this month is meeting potential production partners in London in a bid to take his Aussie-hatched Dusty Springfield biotuner, "Dusty," to the West End. As he does this, he'll be keenly monitoring "Priscilla" and "Dirty Dancing," which opens Oct. 24 at London's Aldwych Theater with a hefty £11 million ($21 million) advance.

The Brit production of the tuner, based on the guilty-pleasure teen romance pic, is co-produced with Karl Sydow and stars some principals from the Oz version, which played for 18 months domestically and in New Zealand and grossed more than $41 million.

On a much smaller scale, the Ensemble Theater's Judy Garland biotuner "End of the Rainbow," with Caroline O'Connor, played a return season Down Under before four weeks at Edinburgh's Assembly Hall, as part of the Fringe Festival. Producers Ross Mollison and William Burdett Coutts are finalizing plans for an early '07 West End season of that three-hander.

Homegrown tuners from Australia have a patchy track record in penetrating the international marketplace.

Peter Allen biomusical "The Boy From Oz" was a domestic hit both first time around and in the recent domestic arena tour with Broadway headliner Hugh Jackman. But the show had to go through a difficult, protracted reworking before it cracked the Great White Way in 2003, and then only overcame mixed reviews because of the critical and public embrace extended to its star.

Another local hit, the Jacobsen family's 2001 Johnny O'Keefe tuner "Shout!" failed to travel because, while the pioneering Oz rocker of the 1950s was a household name Down Under, he was largely unknown offshore.

"We investigated a few international options," says Michael Jacobsen. "The story and concept would have worked but would have needed significant overlay, so we abandoned those plans."

Around the same time "Boy From Oz" reached Broadway, the Jacobsen family nabbed the rights to "Dirty Dancing" and the tide began to turn.

The arena overhaul of "Boy From Oz" wrapped its 36-show tour in Perth Oct. 2, with Jackman selling out venues of 10,000 seats or more. Pending the star's availability, producers Robert Fox and Ben Gannon have hinted that a return season at Gotham's Radio City is in their sights for the retooled show.

The eagerness of Australian producers to develop new musicals is relatively new.

Only five years ago, Frost lamented to Variety that it was almost impossible to produce home-grown tuners. Investors cannot tap tax breaks, so venture capitalists were avoiding live theater because, as he admits, "there's a deep history of burned investors in Australia." Also, the $5 million pre-production costs are a big gamble in the relatively small Oz and New Zealand market, even with a potential Asian tour.

Awareness of hit films or biographical plays of performers makes projects built around those key elements ideal.

"Priscilla," which is based on Elliot's film about three fearless drag queens who brave the Australian outback in a silver bus called Priscilla, blended inner-urban camp and outback butch in a mix that was widely embraced Down Under and abroad.

Show features actors Jeremy Stanford, Daniel Scott and Tony Sheldon dancing, singing and cavorting to new versions of original disco hits like "I Will Survive" and "I Love the Nightlife."

According to Frost and Koops, the $750,000 bus, bedecked with hydraulic gadgetry, is the real star of the show.

The "Priscilla" movie grossed $12 million in Australia and remains the eighth highest-grossing Aussie film in the domestic market. It grossed $11 million Stateside, its cult following fueling a healthy international ancillary life. "Priscilla" is no "Crocodile Dundee" ($175 million Stateside), but it's a title people remember and it helped launch the careers of principals Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving, while giving a boost to British vet Terence Stamp. Whether the stage show will give a similar boost to Australian tuners internationally largely depends on the success of the Sydney run.

"Our whole brief is, let's not worry about the future and focus on what has to get done," Koops says.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 8:39pm

Sydney Morning Herald...


Stephan Elliot's 1994 hit film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was surely destined for the stage, with its bitchy protagonists, disco tunes, stilettos and signature scene of silk billowing from its eponymous run-down bus.

Director Simon Phillips' bold, exuberant and colourful production celebrates the film's spirit of defiance. Though thin on plot, it is big on scene-stealing costumes and the pluck of the drag trio Bernadette, Tick/Mitzi and Adam/Felicia as they travel into Australia's vast interior.
Replete with disco and pop songs, including Downtown, Venus, Go West, I Will Survive, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Hot Stuff and We Belong, Priscilla is as much a showroom extravaganza as it is a musical.

In every sense it is a jukebox show, and although musical director and arranger Stephen "Spud" Murphy does wonders to pull together the pulsating cut-and-paste score, there are times when the production cries out for a couple of original songs to better evoke and propel the odyssey.

Missed opportunities and structural problems dog the show's weaker second half, which too easily loses sight of the fun-loving Felicia (Daniel Scott) after he is assaulted in Coober Pedy.

Priscilla, however, has tremendous promise. Tony Sheldon is sensational as the buoyant and brooding Bernadette. He gives the work its anchor, humour and heart. Scott is terrifically engaging and a talent to watch, while Jeremy Stanford is yet to blossom in his conflicted part as Mitzi.

Nick Schlieper's lighting and Brian Thomson's spare set design cleverly display the gloriously inventive costumes, designed by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner. They add enormously to the spectacle and wit. Choreographer Ross Coleman ensures that the pace is brisk and that the splashier dance routines have variety and verve.

Genevieve Lemon delivers an amusingly gutsy performance as the pub owner Shirley, while Michael Caton is ideal as the laconic mechanic Bob, an old romantic at heart, who bridges the gap between the old and new worlds that Priscilla charts.

Hovering over the action are the Divas, a trio made up of Danielle Barnes, Sophie Carter and Amelia Cormack, who add a starry, other-worldly effect.

Priscilla needs further development but it's good fun and magical in its crowning moments. It has the makings of a hit.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 8:47pm

It's beginning to look like Sheldon could very well repeat his sweep of the theatre awards of two seasons ago, only this time for Best Actor, as opposed to Featured.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 9:04pm

Rath, seeing this at Christmas so will let you know what i think then, but going by some of the shots released with the reviews over here it looks brillant.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/8/06 at 9:16pm

Keep posting what you hear - it's great! I'm dying to see this. It kills me to be so far away!

[vbplayer]

Posted: 10/9/06 at 11:06am

I am very happy for the great reception it is getting. Now when will it come to the States? Can't wait to see it!