Priscilla Queen of the Desert: all the good stuff, all the glitz and glamour

08 Oct 2019


"Who wants to see a tame drag queen?" asks Alan Kinsella rhetorically. Kinsella is directing the Lower Ossington Theatre's production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical. "It's had a few incarnations," he explains. "Originally there was the Australian version and then it got a slight rewrite when it went to the West End. And when it went to Broadway it got a huge rewrite from Bette Midler. She kind of sanitized it, she wanted to make it more family friendly, thinking it would sell more tickets as a family show. I don't know if that fully worked. Any kind of vulgarity and the risque jokes were toned down. But we've got the version before that which is not so tame. Which I much prefer."

In 2010, "The Broadway version started out here in Toronto, it was the tryout," says Kinsella. "So it never toured back. It was hugely successful at the time. Even more so in Toronto though it ran two years on Broadway which is pretty healthy. It's hugely ambitious. It's one of my bucket list of musicals, I've always wanted to direct it. We finally got the rights, earlier in the year. Producer Joseph Patrick, who runs the theatre, is a big fan of the musical as well, so it was a no-brainer. All the team is excited."

Kinsella has directed a wide range of productions at the LOT including musicals Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Mary Poppins, Hair, Hairspray, Anything Goes and Legally Blonde, as well as dramatic pieces like The Woman in Black. Priscilla holds a special appeal to him. "The music is just fantastic," he says. "We just finished doing a run-through of act one and every single song is gold. And of course every single song reminds me of my coming out years. It's like a trip down memory lane every five seconds for me. It's really lovely myself sitting down to watch a show that I can identify with on so many levels. The audience is going to be able to do that too."

Kinsella notes that the movie was a huge hit partly because of the music and says that, "A lot of the songs in the movie made it into the musical. "I Love the Nightlife," "MacArthur Park" and "Go West," they're all there but as actual full production numbers. The only one that didn't make it from the movie is the opening song "I've Never Been to Me." The original Australian production took it out and I was a little sad about that because I love that song. But there's another 25 really good songs to make up for it."

When I mention my favourite number from the Broadway/Toronto tryout version, Nick Adams' incendiary "Hot Stuff," Kinsella agrees. "That's a really interesting song in the show. It starts out as a really fun sexy number but then it becomes quite dark because he goes down into the abandoned drive-in where all those roughnecks are crowded, and you know it's not going to go well. Priscilla is very good in that it shows the sex of gay life but when we're comfortable maybe, when we're in a bit of a bubble in a big city, that we forget what it can be elsewhere. That kind of number shows that."

Thought the LOT has done many large scale musicals, the Broadway version of Priscilla was massive. "It's a huge show so it's a huge cast. Every few pages of script there's another production number. There's a huge amount of characters. Some of the characters you only see once but that actor is still in the show as ensemble and other things. We have rented our costumes and made one or two extra just to beef it up even more. The ensemble still appears as cupcakes and paintbrushes. All that good stuff, all the glitz and glamour is there."

Performing at the Randolph Theatre even allows for a character who would not fit into the LOT's Ossington home. "There will one hundred percent be the bus," says Kinsella. "A 3D bus. Maybe not motorized, but it will move and you'll be able see inside and the exterior, the whole works." He admits the show has been a challenge to design. "It changes locations every five minutes. It's on the bus, it's off the bus, it's in nightclubs, up on the mountain. It's everywhere."

We digress into a discussion on triple threat careers that the LOT has been instrumental in launching. "We've got a fantastic cast," says Kinsella. "One or two seasoned LOT performers and a lot of young new people as well. That's part of the ethos of the company. To help and elevate performers to another level." 

But he won't dish on any favourites. "All of them are breakout actors and everyone in the audience is going to find someone they really love. The main trio of Noah Tremblay, David John Phillips and Luke Whitt are absolutely amazing and the chemistry between them is wonderful. What's a real treat about working with the three is that, in the show it's very much three ages of gay characters, and then in the rehearsal room it's exactly the same. You can see someone giving the knowledge to somebody, the naivete of another person. You can see life imitating art."