SYDNEY, Australia – When it comes to musicals, Australians like ’em swishy.
A few seasons ago, Hugh Jackman flounced his way to Tony glory as Peter Allen in the Down Under import “The Boy From Oz.”
Now comes a stage adaptation of the 1994 movie “The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert” that’s so heavy on sequins it outshines the Southern Cross.
Local critics praised this lavish, $6.5 million spectacle when it opened here last fall. Since then, it’s caught on with disco-loving straight women, ages 20-40. They’re repeat customers whose enjoyment of the musical increases in direct proportion to the number of “Priscilla-tails” (cosmopolitans in glow-in-the-dark martini glasses) they consume before, during and after the show.
They have one hell of a time.
“Priscilla” is aimed squarely at the “Mamma Mia!” market, which is about as lucrative as it gets. The ABBA musical has grossed $2 billion around the world.
“Priscilla” ain’t in that league yet, but its Australian producers have begun laying the groundwork for London and Broadway.
With 23 tons of scenery, 514 costumes and enough glitter to entomb Liberace, a Broadway production could cost as much as $15 million, industry sources estimate.
“Priscilla” follows two drag queens and a transvestite from Sydney as they drive through the Outback in a bus christened Priscilla.
Written and directed by Stephan Elliott, the movie starred Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and Ter-
ence Stamp and made clever use of such ’70s tunes as “I Love the Nightlife,” “I Will Survive” and “Dancing Queen.”
The stage version uses many of the same songs to further, sometimes cheekily, sometimes clunkily, the plot.
There’s no ABBA, however, since Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus are said to despise the movie, which mocks their music.
At the opening bars of “Fernando,” Bernadette delivers the film’s funniest line: “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: No more f – – – ing ABBA!”
“Priscilla,” while a hit in Sydney, is not without problems. It assumes the audience knows the movie extremely well, which is certainly the case here, but won’t be in New York.
Production sources blame the script’s failings on the war between Elliott and co-writer Allan Scott, who wrote the thriller “Don’t Look Now.”
“They don’t speak,” one person says.
Scott’s first draft was about a producer who wants to turn the movie into a musical and hunts down the real drag queens on whom the characters are based.
“We did that one for a few days [in the workshop] and then threw it over our shoulders,” admits Tony Sheldon, who, as Bernadette, measures up to Ter-
ence Stamp.
“It was unplayable.”
In frustration, director Simon Phillips got out the original screenplay, and the actors just read that.
Elliott, unhappy to see his movie turned into a musical, had to be dragged to the reading. He’s as eccentric as his characters. His theater program bio reads: “Stephan has slipped into retirement, writing trashy American teen comedies. He can be found sleeping on friends’ floors.”
He sat through the first act of “Priscilla” with his hands over his eyes, sources say. But by Act II, he was hooked, and went off to write his own script.
It, too, was unplayable.
The eventual script was cobbled together by the director and various other members of the production team, sources say.
What the Australian producers should do is bring in a Broadway pro to re-write the show for New York.
Harvey Fierstein, a big fan of the movie, springs to mind, as does Douglas Carter Beane (“Xanadu”).
Broadway has a huge appetite for disco and camp. On those fronts, “Priscilla” delivers.