Tony Sheldon on Priscilla Queen of the Desert
ON STAGE / Musical stage version of iconic tale starts Oct 12
Rob Salerno / Toronto / Tuesday, October 12, 2010
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/Tony_Sheldon_on_Priscilla_Queen_of_the_Desert-9261.aspx (http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/Tony_Sheldon_on_Priscilla_Queen_of_the_Desert-9261.aspx)
At a press event for the Toronto launch of Priscilla Queen of the Desert – the Musical, star Tony Sheldon gets visibly choked up as he describes the titular coach bus – reimagined for the stage as a glittery, dazzling, LED-strewn extravaganza – as "a cocoon from the prejudice and bigotry of rural Australia."
"In these troubling times for young people, with all these teen suicides, we need these messages that say we're all part of a rainbow," Sheldon said.
The gay 55-year-old star of the Australian stage is on his first North American tour with Priscilla, a stage adaptation of the 1994 cult film from down under which tells the story of two drag queens and a transsexual woman who cross the Australian outback in a coach bus named Priscilla, encountering and overcoming prejudice along the way.