Garishly colourful, excessive and absolutely fabulous, the Aussie musical has set the West End alight with its gender-bending storyline, risqué jokes and a very clever bus.

Just when you thought London’s Theatreland couldn’t get anymore camp, along comes the Australian stage musical Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, in which every possible boundary of conservative taste is blasted to smithereens... and then some!

Opened in the West End at the Palace Theatre on March 23, the musical — based on the 1994 movie ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ and the book by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott — follows the story of a trio of drag queens who take their show to the middle of the Australian outback aboard a battered old bus nicknamed Priscilla.

For the main characters — Tick/Mitzi (Jason Donovan), Bernadette (Tony Sheldon) and Adam/Felicia (Oliver Thornton) — it’s a journey of self-discovery and anticipation, punctuated by flying divas, endless soft porn references and a roll call of über-camp songs from ‘I Love The Nightlife’, ‘Go West’ and ‘I Will Survive’ to ‘Hot Stuff’, ‘Boogie Wonderland’ and a medley of Kylie hits.

Directed by Simon Phillips and choreographed by Ross Coleman, this production has arrived in London after a record-breaking run in its Aussie homeland. Its history goes back six years to a meeting at an Islington restaurant between lead producers Liz Koops and Garry McQuinn of Back Row Productions and one of the movie’s producers.

“Over dinner, I was asked if I thought Priscilla would make a good musical. It was one of those classic lightbulb moments,” said McQuinn who also shares production credits with Michael Hamlyn for Specific Films, Allan Scott and the Really Useful Theatre Company. “The film isn’t a musical; it’s a film with music, but you could tell that it had kind of a musical structure in it and I knew we had something.”

In Australia, the production build cost just over AUS$1m, and the costumes alone totalled AUS$1.3m. The London figures, said McQuinn, have been roughly comparable.

“By the time this opens, we would’ve been in set up mode for over three months, having got in at the beginning of January as soon as Spamalot moved out. That’s fairly average for a show of this size and in fact the people who are taking this show in Toronto are planning a four month set-up schedule.

“It’s bizarre really. I grew up in stage management and I remember getting a show open at the end of week one, so for me this is a hell of a long run-up and now that I’m the person who signs the cheques it’s a very expensive process. But I understand it — we now live in the age of theatre spectacle with all the technology that goes with it.

“The production standards of today’s big musicals have taken a quantum leap in the last 10 years or so, and audiences now expect them. Cardboard flats no longer cut it!”

Technology is indeed king on Priscilla... or should that be queen? The bus is a nine tonne, fully self-contained vehicle built from scratch by Stage One, the Yorkshire-based company that worked alongside the producers and scenic designer Brian Thomson and lighting designer Nick Schlieper for over a year to meet the show’s scenic and automation requirements.

Completing the visual feast is Nick Schlieper’s clubland-esque lighting design which relies on around 70 moving fixtures and 600 conventionals supplied by PRG Lighting through “the very supportive” Peter Marshall.

Schlieper explained: “The show is essentially lit by the conventional rig, in quite an ‘old-fashioned’ way, including several extremely bright dialogue scenes, out in the desert. The moving light rig comes in over the top of these in the show’s many musical numbers.”

There are 120 ways of additional Avolites ART 4000 dimmers and the conventionals are almost entirely comprised of ETC Source Four Profiles in front and sidelight roles, while PAR cans with scrollers provide the backlight as well as set dressing and additional sidelight. These are controlled by a Strand 520 desk which also runs a large quantity of set electrics.

On the intelligent lighting front, Vari*Lite VL3500Qs make up all of the overheads, as well as providing additional frontlight for the cloths and flown pieces. These are augmented by a full set of both high and low level sidelight from Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200s.

Ten Source Four Revolutions (15°-35°) and a couple of VL1000s provide additional frontlight; six Martin MAC 250 Entours provide extra footlight and there is a light curtain consisting of six DHA digital units. These are controlled by the afore-mentioned grandMA, which also triggers the bus video and media server for the LED web — built by Stage One using Philips LEDs — that earns its keep before the bus makes its entrance.

“The web is integrated into a black slash curtain which backs the first five numbers of the show, helping to set and vary the tone within a sparkling black surround,” commented Schlieper, who has worked on the project with associate LD Michael Odam, lighting supervisor Matt Roper and production LX Fraser Hall.

“The other aspect is the large amount of set electrics in the show — there’s virtually not a piece of scenery that doesn’t come with its own lights attached.

“The flown Harbour Bridge has over 50 channels of onboard dimming, including both real and ‘fake’ neon as well as lots of three-circuit ropelight. The main portals of the basic set are trimmed in over 200m of red neonflex and chew up in excess of another 100 circuits, and the ‘Les Girls’ steps have their handrails completely encrusted in miles of bunched up Christmas tree lights.

“In our context, the sun and the moon become an internally-lit mirrorball, covered in two-way mirror tiles containing two circuits of dimmable fluorescents.

“The bus interior is lit by around 100 MR16 fittings of various kinds and also contains about a dozen RGB LED fittings and some dimmable flourescents, as well as all the usual headlights and indicators which, of course, are all wirelessly controlled.”

Additional equipment include Wildfire UV fresnels, Strand Iris 2-cells, Lycian M2 2500w and Starklite 1200w followspots and Look Solutions Unique haze machines.

Republished with kind permission from TPI Magazine.

Written by Mark Cunningham, photography by Tristram Kenton, Tracey Schramm & Mark Cunningham