Priscilla a rambunctious, guilty pleasure
By Postmedia News, Jamie Portman October 28, 2010
http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/Priscilla+rambunctious+guilty+pleasure/3742599/story.htmlTORONTO — What about those dancing cupcakes?
It's tempting to describe Priscilla Queen of the Desert as a triumph of costume over content.
After all, this new musical, which had a rambunctious North American premiere Tuesday at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre, uses 500 costumes, more than 100 wigs, 150 pairs of glittering shoes and some 200 headpieces.
Cheerful, unapologetic excess is the name of the game here, as two flamboyant drag queens and a proud middle-aged transsexual head across the Australian outback in a battered old bus named Priscilla — to the accompaniment of a jukebox score that's cheeky enough to embrace such disparate numbers as Madonna's Like a Prayer, Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park, an aria from Verdi's La Traviata, and Italian composer Ennio Morricone's soundtrack score from Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
