#51
Posted: 3/24/09 at 8:59am
you cant base an opinion of a show on that lol
Telegraph - positive
Those who like their musicals tasteful, subtle, and preferably written by Stephen Sondheim and directed by Trevor Nunn should give this wildly entertaining new import from Australia a wide berth. It makes Mamma Mia! seem like something by Chekhov.
The original film on which the show is based couldn?t quite decide whether it was a comic road movie, or a more serious study of the isolation and prejudice experienced by homosexual drag queens. There were even moments when it had a touch of the art house about it.
At the Palace Theatre, I?m delighted to report, an insanely euphoric and wildly contagious vulgarity prevails. It?s ten times more enjoyable than the screen version.Within the opening moments three exotically costumed divas are descending on wires from the flies. The mirror ball flashes round the house, while the audience is sprayed with confetti, and almost physically pummelled by some of the greatest disco anthems ever to fill a dance floor. Meanwhile I would be sacked if I recorded even the mildest banter, let alone the more outrageous jokes that grace the cracking script by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott. The word filthy is inadequate. But the one-liners and snide put-downs are also wonderfully funny and there was one gag involving a man nicknamed Trumpet and a ginger nut biscuit that almost had me out of my seat and writhing helplessly in the aisle.
The story is simply told. Three Sydney drag artistes, none of them especially happy with their lives, accept a gig in Alice Springs and travel across the outback in a bus they call Priscilla. As they encounter hostile locals, a friendly mechanic, and bitch, moan, and rehearse their lip-synching and dance routines, you come to care for them, and they come to care for each other. By the time one the trio reveals that he is married and the father of a son, while another falls in love with the apparently straight mechanic, the piece has become hugely touching as well as entertaining.
Simon Phillips?s production has a driving energy and a palpable mission to delight; the costumes aand wigs are almost insanely over the top and feature so many feathers one begins to fear for the survival of the ostrich as a species; even the bus Priscilla is an ingeniously mechanised and cunningly designed delight.
Ross Coleman?s choreography ranges from polite 1950s style cabaret to hip thrusting in-yer-face outrageousness, and the moment when a disco-version of that ineffably silly song MacArthur Park is performed by dancers dressed as lime green cup-cakes is positively sublime in its silliness.
Jason Donovan is engagingly gauche and touching as a gay man facing up to the responsibilities of fatherhood, Tony Sheldon brings a lovely dignity and warmth to the role of the elderly transsexual Bernadette, and Olivier Thornton is bitchily comic and a hell of an eyeful as the third member of this unlikely crew.
As I said at the outset, the fastidious and the squeamish should avoid this show like the plague. Everyone else will have a terrific drag ball.
* Telegraph Rating: * * * *
Telegraph - positive
Those who like their musicals tasteful, subtle, and preferably written by Stephen Sondheim and directed by Trevor Nunn should give this wildly entertaining new import from Australia a wide berth. It makes Mamma Mia! seem like something by Chekhov.
The original film on which the show is based couldn?t quite decide whether it was a comic road movie, or a more serious study of the isolation and prejudice experienced by homosexual drag queens. There were even moments when it had a touch of the art house about it.
At the Palace Theatre, I?m delighted to report, an insanely euphoric and wildly contagious vulgarity prevails. It?s ten times more enjoyable than the screen version.Within the opening moments three exotically costumed divas are descending on wires from the flies. The mirror ball flashes round the house, while the audience is sprayed with confetti, and almost physically pummelled by some of the greatest disco anthems ever to fill a dance floor. Meanwhile I would be sacked if I recorded even the mildest banter, let alone the more outrageous jokes that grace the cracking script by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott. The word filthy is inadequate. But the one-liners and snide put-downs are also wonderfully funny and there was one gag involving a man nicknamed Trumpet and a ginger nut biscuit that almost had me out of my seat and writhing helplessly in the aisle.
The story is simply told. Three Sydney drag artistes, none of them especially happy with their lives, accept a gig in Alice Springs and travel across the outback in a bus they call Priscilla. As they encounter hostile locals, a friendly mechanic, and bitch, moan, and rehearse their lip-synching and dance routines, you come to care for them, and they come to care for each other. By the time one the trio reveals that he is married and the father of a son, while another falls in love with the apparently straight mechanic, the piece has become hugely touching as well as entertaining.
Simon Phillips?s production has a driving energy and a palpable mission to delight; the costumes aand wigs are almost insanely over the top and feature so many feathers one begins to fear for the survival of the ostrich as a species; even the bus Priscilla is an ingeniously mechanised and cunningly designed delight.
Ross Coleman?s choreography ranges from polite 1950s style cabaret to hip thrusting in-yer-face outrageousness, and the moment when a disco-version of that ineffably silly song MacArthur Park is performed by dancers dressed as lime green cup-cakes is positively sublime in its silliness.
Jason Donovan is engagingly gauche and touching as a gay man facing up to the responsibilities of fatherhood, Tony Sheldon brings a lovely dignity and warmth to the role of the elderly transsexual Bernadette, and Olivier Thornton is bitchily comic and a hell of an eyeful as the third member of this unlikely crew.
As I said at the outset, the fastidious and the squeamish should avoid this show like the plague. Everyone else will have a terrific drag ball.
* Telegraph Rating: * * * *
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
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