Based on the cult classic movie (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert released in 1994)
London, Palace Theatre (Previews from March 10 2009, Opened March 23 2009 – ? December 2011)
London, Dominion Theatre (2021)
Article from TPI, May 2009
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. Mark Cunningham minced over to the Palace Theatre to take a peek…
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.
The stage was specially reinforced by Stage One to safely accommodate the weight of Priscilla — a stunningly versatile contraption that opens up on one side to reveal an over–the-top boudoir, complete with leopard print décor and bamboo curtains!
As the old saying goes, one should never work with children or animals… but how about custom-manufactured vehicles? “Well, Priscilla can be a temperamental old cow!” laughed McQuinn. “She’s almost anthropomorphic — a huge piece of invented kit with a whole bunch of interrelated technical disciplines jammed into her.
“Inevitably, because of the nature of our business, our extended preview period is designed to identify exactly which elements are likely to go wrong and then troubleshoot accordingly.
“You can plan this stuff until you’re blue in the face but you end up learning about something like Priscilla as you progress in rehearsals.”
How did McQuinn and his team settle on the concept of a real bus in the first place? “It wasn’t easy. I mean, how do you present the great Australian outback on stage? And we spent 18 months trying to deal with how to present Priscilla.
“The minute you put a bus on stage that’s big enough to accommodate five or six dancing people, you know it’s got to be of a size that’ll eat up pretty much all the performance area.
“We considered all kinds of ideas including video and a neon outline, but we realised that we couldn’t justify anything other than an actual vehicle that’s a performer in its own right and Stage One have done an incredible job.”
McQuinn’s background is steeped in stage management experience which, of all his producer colleagues, makes him the default first point of contact for all of Priscilla’s suppliers, including Autograph Sound Recording, PRG Lighting, Unusual Rigging and Paul Mathew Transport.
His relationship with Stage One came about towards the end of the show’s Australian run after automation project manager Greg ‘Plod’ Gowans — managing director of Stage One’s Sydney-based sister company Qmotion Australia — took over from a previous supplier at short notice.
Going back a step, it was in 2006 when Gowans was the production manager for the automation of the Commonwealth Games ceremonies in Melbourne that he first met Stage One’s technical director Jim Tinsley.
“Stage One was effectively my client,” said Gowans. “It was interesting to work with the folk from Yorkshire and I quickly realised that there are a lot of similarities about the ways that Northerners and Aussies work. Both are pretty direct in their communication and like-minded.
“Around two years ago, Jim returned to Australia and it was decided to set up an automation division of Stage One, which turned out to be Qmotion Australia — a specialist ‘boutique’ company that would complement Stage One’s already established service portfolio and service the needs of Asia.”
McQuinn has worked with Gowans for nearly 12 years. “Frankly I’d never go anywhere else. I have enough technical insight to know that the guy’s a f**kin’ genius and when Jim Tinsley came over to Melbourne we got on really well, so involving Stage One in the West End production was an easy decision.
“We visited Stage One’s very impressive operation and took a leap of faith, deciding to go with a one-stop shop approach and get them to do as much as possible on the scenic side — supplying all the scenery, the 10m diameter revolve, scissor lifts and the steel for reinforcing the floor — removing any need to discuss issues with a committee of different suppliers, which I’m happy to live without.”
The scenic elements built by Stage One also included a full proscenium, four smaller portals positioned at intervals upstage and embedded with LED flex, and a flown steel framed replica of Sydney Harbour Bridge, resplendent in a variety of lighting.
Added to this already impressive list were sets for different sequences, such as the Alice Casino and Broken Hill pub, and the glamorous Les Girls, consisting of a flown, candy-pink, full height double staircase, featuring columns and embellished with glitter and fairy lights.
BACK ON THE BUS…
Costing a cool £700,000, Priscilla herself is essentially a steel frame over which there is a ‘skin’ of Philips LEDs covered in another layer of PETG, a form of plastic that was vacuum-moulded to resemble the texture of a real bus.
Gowans commented: “As PETG is translucent we can put the LEDs close behind that layer and if we light Priscilla from the outside she just looks like a dirty old silver bus, as she does for the first half hour. Then when we turn the LEDs on, we get the colour and movement coming through, so it’s a very effective visual gag.”
Stage One also developed the driver boards for the LEDs. “The LED system takes Art-Net commands from the grandMA lighting desk,” continued Gowans, “so we’ve worked closely with the [Australian] lighting designer Nick Schlieper because we’re putting 40,000 LED pixels in the middle of the stage. If you don’t give the LD a voice in that he’s not going to be too happy! So the lighting desk triggers the video sequences and controls the intensity of the LED brightness output.
“We animate different images on the outside of the bus using real-time video. In Australia we were responsible for creating many of those animated sequences as well as testing the LED system.”
The company developed a unique drive wheel system to facilitate the realistic movements of the bus including a pneumatic air system connecting the lower and upper chassis to give it a more realistic driving movement.
All of the show’s automation is operated by Stage One’s renowned motion control system, Qmotion. There are 22 axes of automation on the bus, which is moved around on eight motors — four of which control the positions of slew rings while the other four control the positions of the drive wheels.
Gowans, whose crew was working 24/7 in day and night shifts during the early set-up, said: “We can set the slew rings at any angle and then drive the bus in any direction. When we do some of the more complex moves, we use animation to create a macro.
“We create a model of the bus on AutoCAD and then animate the slews and drive wheels within the model so that they follow the motion of the virtual bus.
“This allows the model to figure out the positions that all of the eight motors have to be at any point in time. We collect that data and it’s sent to each of the motors five times per second.
“This is the same technology that we began to use at the Athens Olympics and then later at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and Asian Games in Doha, so we understand how to do it very well but every application brings a new challenge.
“As a client you can ask us to do something quite complex, but if you can model it and conceptualise it in an animation, you can then automate a real object. Qmotion certainly is a very powerful tool.”
FLYING THE DIVAS
Whilst the bus is the most technically complex element on-stage, the performer flying — another of Stage One’s specialities that also utilises Qmotion — is probably the most important part of the team’s work on Priscilla. It is integrated into the show with great panache when the Three Divas (Zoë Birkett, Kate Gillespie and Emma Lindars) fly 10-12m above the stage like a turbo-camp Greek chorus for various sequences.
“One of the swing Divas had previous experience of flying in The Lion King, but the others were all completely new to it,” explained Gowans. “You have to take great care with them on many levels because it takes weeks to build someone’s confidence in the safety of the harnesses and apparatus, and seconds to destroy it.”
Qmotion also controls two stage lifts, the revolve and several flying scenic pieces. The overall automation operation is divided between technicians Davide Monastero, Tony Milross, Simone Minasi and Jamie West.
Another Qmotion-driven icon of the show is a giant 2m crystal encrusted shoe that descends to position itself over Priscilla before projecting out 5m over the audience on two axes of automation. The construction of this, along with other items such as flying eucalyptus trees (yes, really!), came under the wing of Stage One’s scenic interpretation department.
The bus itself moves around 40 times during the show, added to which there are numerous internal moves such as the opening of the large garage door on the side, the up/down motion of the three electric personnel lifts and movement of the wing mirrors.
“Obviously, running cables for mains power would be restrictive,” said Gowans, “so everything on the bus is battery powered and we have enough battery life to run three shows before recharging.”
Designed by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner, nearly 500 costumes are featured in the show and at each performance over 100 wigs, 160 masks and 150+ pairs of tailor-made shoes are worn by the cast. Almost 200 hats and head-dresses are worn — one containing 25 yellow rubber ducks, another with 75 butterflies, and a third that incorporates an aquarium… complete with fish. You get the picture?
Garry McQuinn commented: “Fortuitously, we hired several of the Academy Award-winning costumes that were made for the film by Tim and Lizzy. They gave us a truly unbelievable palette — everything from dancing cup cakes to singing paintbrushes!”
LIGHTING
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.
AUDIO
Sound design for Priscilla was by Michael Waters, working alongside associate sound designer Crispian Covell and audio provider Autograph Sound Recording. Senior production sound engineer is Ken Hampton, sound operators are Andrew Foster (No.1) and Karen Szameit (No.2), and Charlotte Dale is the radio technician.
How did Waters find working with the acoustics and physical attributes of the Palace Theatre? “The Palace isn’t the easiest theatre in which to put a sound system appropriate for a show of this genre, being a pop musical,” he said.
“I needed a system that was capable of being subtle in its dialogue delivery yet able to ramp up to trouser-flapping disco/rock in the big numbers! Priscilla consists of traditional narrative and ballads to ‘bollocking doof’. There’s very little real estate on the floor of the stalls to put any subwoofers, nor much usable space in any of the circle level boxes.
“Other challenges included trying to conform within certain design parameters of the production such as keeping the marble proscenium fully exposed.”
For the main system hangs, Waters chose L-Acoustics elements, with delays and fills handled by d&b Ci80s, E0s, E3s and E8s, and EAW UB12s for surround. System processing is by Dolby Lake DLPs.
Such a vastly dynamic system needed to be as ‘invisible’ as physically possible, which meant tucking the various elements of the PA into nooks and crannies.
Waters commented: “It was also challenging having the stalls floor anti-raked to match the stage raking, thereby reducing head height clearance of the stalls dV-DOSC speakers. Of course, we have audience partition time, so this presented itself!”
With no floor space available, Waters had to fly SB218s behind the centre cluster of four Arcs with an MTD-112P. Delay subs variously consist of d&b Q-Subs or E12s mounted on the rear wall of each level.
Three dV-DOSCs with a dV-Sub per side/level make up the L-R system with the exception of the balcony which has four dV-DOSCs per side.
The system is powered by Crown MA5002VZ amps (lows and subs), Lab.gruppen fP6400s (dVs and Arcs), fP2400Qs (surrounds) and d&b D12s for the d&b elements.
Waters’ choice of FOH mixer was the Yamaha PM1D while a Yamaha M7CL provides band monitoring mix feeds to an Aviom system. “I’ve been using a PM5D in the Australian and New Zealand theatres, but I needed more inputs and outputs for the Palace Theatre production, hence the choice of the 1D.
“Despite encouragement to go with another console, Yamaha has always proven reliable for me over the years and as I use little outboard gear for this show — given the very useful onboard effects and dynamics algorithms — I can make the mix position footprint very small, allowing the producers to sell more seats.”
The combination of Sennheiser 5012/1046 radio systems with DPA 4066 mics has remained Waters’ first choice for cast members for some time. “The three blokes are double miked with a 4061 fitted to the 4066, as are the flying Divas as it’s a tad difficult to get a spare mic to them in emergencies!” said Waters.
“Headset/boom mics are a necessity on this production as the headpiece/wig changes are phenomenal — hairline lapel mics would be obscured, ripped off or destroyed with all the manic changes that occur.”
Other kit includes Stage Research SFX units that store the sound effects for instant cueing. The effects are routed to any or all of the PA including two sets of bespoke reverse radio systems mounted aboard the bus. One of these also serves as foldback for the cast in some scenes.
Priscilla marks Waters’ theatrical sound design début in the West End and he has enjoyed working on the project with Autograph’s Scott Arnold, Duncan Bell and Terry Jardine. “South of the Equator”, as he puts it, he has worked with Australian production giant Jands for nearly 25 years, but wouldn’t hesitate to team up with Autograph again on future London shows.
Also playing key production roles on Priscilla are musical director Richard Beadle, musical supervisor and arranger Stephen ‘Spud’ Murphy, production stage manager Jo Miles, senior production rigger Simon Stone, wardrobe mistress Sandy Smith Wilson and, last but not least, head of production Patrick Murphy and production manager Matt Towell.
Plans are afoot for a North American production of Priscilla to open in Toronto and another in Germany in autumn 2009. A Swedish production will follow in 2010.
TPi