Review: Priscilla, aavikon kuningatar

Their imagination guarantees that there is colour in the production. Lots of color. Insanely wild color, my sense of sight up to the pain threshold, but it doesn’t matter if my retinas are still throbbing a little three hours after the show.

What about the video animations where Priscilla races through the desert bowling kangaroos, koalas and telepolas alike… Hey hustle!

I calculated from the script that the groups of people in the production of costumes and camouflage are the largest in the production, and not without reason, there has been plenty of work from one performance to the next. 24 people in total – all women, by the way; There is still a long way to go to equality.

THEN the next important group is presented: Clarissa Jäärni, Lauri Mikkola, Niki Rautén. They are the narrative soul of the musical: Bernadette, Tick (drag-named Mitzi Mitosis) and Adam (Felicia Jollygoodfellow) – three drag queens who have drifted a little out of the brightest limelight and set off on a bus ride christened Priscilla in search of a new beginning at the very core. That is, from Alice Springs, 2770 kilometers from Sydney to nowhere. Of course, that small town is in the center of the Australian continent, but only geographically. In other words, as Bernadette gives coordinates to the repair aid after the bus breaks up in the middle of the desert: “We are somewhere here halfway between Broken Hill and purgatory.”

In the 1994 Australian film, based on which its director Stephen Elliott directly adapted the musical version, this trio was played by Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce. If Priscilla were to be made into a remake, such an acting combo would probably no longer be an option, at least the woke people would take care of it: only a genuinely transgender performer would be good enough for the role of Bernadette Bassinger.

The Helsinki City Theatre does not need to listen to wake-up calls in this matter (although there was probably some criticism already during the production phase, just in case). It has independently found an excellent Bernadette in Clarissa Jäärn, competent and suitable. He is a good complement to the trio, in which Lauri Mikkola, who has already charmed with his drag artistry in the second lead role of Kinky Boots, is now the most serious character Tick aka Mitzi Mitosis, and Niki Rautén, who radiates in all directions, is the lively Adam.

The compelling nature of Priscilla’s dialogue rests in the striking semi-rogue words of Bernadette, who is curled up in the memories of her former glory, and Adam, the gay fly who flies from flower to flower in the spring of his life. A slight schism in the trio is also caused by the differences in schools: whether to put the show on the backing tape with lip sync, twisting your face or genuinely singing.

There will be amazing demonstrations of both styles on the stage of the City Theatre. Felicia’s entry number, Venus, is a total knockout. And even though it’s lip-sync, it’s definitely not done on a backing track, but the singing is done by the angel choir Johanna Försti–Maria Lund–Jennie Storbacka, who pop up from anywhere to sing loudly and enchantingly either on top of the drag queens, as a trio or with the whole group.

Mikkola, Jäärni and Rautén will have plenty of noise from their own backyard when the opportunity arises. And they will come.

AS THE story is not the most important piece of the whole in Priscilla, as is the tradition of musicals, the music takes care of the audience’s delusion. Well, yes, you could call it a bit calculated, courting the general public, but so what, that’s what musicals live on.

A boomer like me, who lived his teenage years from the end of the 1970s to the end, was nevertheless thrilled and sensitized by this soundtrack, which is built especially on the disco classics of that aforementioned decade and pop hits picked from the next couple of decades. What gems, how attractively arranged and sung! Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, Earth, Wind and Fire (Boogie Wonderland is just one of the best dance songs in the world), Dionne Warwick and of course – as the story moves in both the down under and queer worlds – Aunt Kylli aka Kylie Minogue, the Communards and the Village People.

Before the start of the performance, when I was looking at the song list from the program, I woke up to wonder if it had been combined with the task “what doesn’t belong in the group”. What are Jimmy Webb’s epic McArthur Park and John Denver’s country jogging Thank God I’m a Country Boy doing among the Hot Stuff and Locomotion?!

There is a place for them in the loose narrative as well. Country music is played a couple of times when drag queens flock to the middle of the rural community of inner Australia, for whom these characters are literally queer. The poor devils thank their God that they are just ordinary jerks.

McArthur Park was a chapter in itself. Yes, the disco queen Donna Summer also made her own version of it (1978), which was far from actor Richard Harris‘ interpretation in terms of fame, measure and charm, but that disco connection alone is not enough to explain the song’s presence. The trick is that on the basis of perhaps the most famous and ambiguous line of the song’s lyrics, “someone left the cake out in the rain”, an unbridled cake tearing was built, which fills the large stage of the city theater, also known as the airport, to the brim. If Webb’s classic song has ever been suspected to have been born with the influence of some psychedelics, then in Tokoinranta such a vision is seen as a live realization.

EXACTLY THIS kind of carnival carried by nostalgic disco music, Samuel Harjanne’s direction is across the board. An unrestrained flight of imagination, which costume designer Tinja Salmi and the creators of these sprawling outfits have certainly been excited about. So was the conductor Eeva Kontu at the premiere of all the music, who sometimes found it difficult to stay in her orchestral position.

Priscilla is like a pride parade in a theatre environment, which the audience does not just watch from the stands, but lives with it with every beat – “looking for some hot stuff, baby, this evening”.

In this avalanche, the few lulls of the performance even feel bumpy. Like the rather syrupy ending, where Tick, who once left his family to find his true sexual identity, meets his wife and for the first time also his son Benji (Iivari Luomala) – and of course gets his approval as a gay father. Or Bernadette’s new love for mechanic Bob (Risto Kaskilahti), a basic jerk whose secret vice is his enthusiasm for drag shows. Or a moment of pity when Felicia gets her ass spanked after pulling such a rough miner in full swing.

Priscilla is above all entertainment dosed with a big scoop, there’s no need to dig into anything else. Of course, there is a bit of that pride manifestation and queer emancipation in terms of content, but that’s already everyday stuff these days. Even the so-called general public is no longer startled or heated by it, unlike perhaps less than thirty years ago, when the film Priscilla – Queen of the Desert premiered. At that time, the word queer was still downright weird for us as well.