Colourful, camp and courageous, Bernadette, Mitzi and Felicia have wowed audiences in cinemas and theatres the world over for more than 30 years now, but when the stage musical adaptation of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, premiered on London’s West End in 2009, with Jason Donovan in the roles of Tick and his alter-ego Mitzi, it was the start of an association that by rights should have started a decade and a half earlier with the release of the smash hit movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Terence Stamp, the master of the brooding silence, Nigerian-born Hugo Weaving, and Neighbours’ heart-throb Guy Pearce may be the stars we have all come to know and love as the three friends embarking on an adventure across Australia outback on a bus called Priscilla, but originally, it was Donovan who was offered the role of young drag queen Adam, aka Felica, eventually played by Pearce. The rest of the proposed casting was quite different too at that point, the actor recalls.
“The original line up was Michael Hutchence, myself as Felicia and Richard E Grant,” he remembers, explaining, “I decided not to do the film. I’d been through the court case with Face magazine and it felt like accepting the role could be seen as exploitative. It was a wrong decision.”
The court case he refers to saw him win a libel action against the magazine in 1992 after they had speculated on Donovan’s sexuality.
“It was one of those moments, a bit of a bittersweet pill for me, but listen, in life they are the decisions you make. Who would have thought, when I read Priscilla, this wacky script that could have gone a lot of ways, that it was the right thing at the right time. It had a great soundtrack and a wonderful cast in Terence, Guy and Hugo. I don’t regret my decision because regrets are a waste of emotion, but I should have taken the risk.”
Both on screen and stage, Priscilla tells the story of two drag queens and a transexual as together they each embark on their own individual search for happiness and acceptance, entertaining the locals and themselves as they cross the outback by performing ever more outrageous drag shows, lip-syncing to a host of classic disco chart-toppers.
Despite its colour, frivolity and joyous nature, there’s a darkness at the heart of the piece, which addresses everything from racism to toxic masculinity and homophobia.
“I don’t really see it as a show about drag or trans,” says the father of three. “I see it as a show about diversity. About people trying to understand themselves while living in a world that doesn’t always understand them. It dosen’t matter whether you are black or white, or gay or straight, or fat or thin, we all have issues and yet, at the end of the day, we all belong. We all need to accept each other, and that is as strong a message today as it was when the show was written all those years ago.”
Despite eschewing that original movie offer, Donovan has become synonymous with the show. Having starred in the West End premiere he has gone on to tour the UK and Ireland as Mitzi and, on the latest replica production, he joined producer Mark Goucher as a co-producer of the show.
“To be honest, I wanted to be part of the producing team because Mark asked me,” he says, candidly. “I have a long association with Priscilla, which goes back to the film because one of its producers, Michael Hamlin, is a good friend of mine. I’ve also toured it around the UK for many years as well as doing it in London. So I suppose Priscilla and me are a nice pairing and, from Mark’s perspective, having someone like myself on board added value to the product, even if I’m not necessarily in it. I guess from a marketing point of view that helps stir things up a bit.”
If that’s Donovan talking with his business head, the actor who became a household name while still a teenager playing Scott Robinson in Neighbours can’t hide his love of the musical for too long. Terence Stamp once told me playing Bernadette in the film was one of the proudest moments of his career. Donovan shares that sentiment.
“It definitely is,” he says. “It was magic. You wait for those magical moments to come along and for me, Priscilla was one of them.”
That magic started in 2009 when, on the 10th of March, Donovan stepped on stage as Tick then Mitzi for the very first time, at The Palace Theatre. With its feel-good soundtrack, spectacular staging and eye-catching award-winning costumes, the actor recalls that from day one, the audience reaction to the show lifted everyone on stage to another level.
“So many of my shows are about touring, out of 20 maybe two could come into Town. So that really was a magic moment because I don’t often get to work in the West End. I remember saying to my wife that I was working with an incredible creative team; there was Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel who designed the costumes, and Simon Phillips, who directed it.”
Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner’s glorious costume designs would go on to win multiple awards including the Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Costume and the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Costume Design.
He continues, “There were a lot of Aussies on board that production, including production designer Brian Thomson who was one of the original designers on The Rocky Horror Show, he worked with my dad [actor Terence Donovan] in a show called The Stripper, in Sydney, which was Richard O’Brien and Richard Hartley’s first show after Rocky Horror. That particular production of Priscilla in 2009 really was as good as it gets.”
And while we are talking about Rocky Horror, it’s worth noting that Priscilla wasn’t the first time Donovan had cross-dressed for a role. In 1998 he played the pansexual mad scientist Dr Frank N Furter in the The Rocky Horror Show, in fact, it was on that production that he mt his wife, Angela, a stage manager on the tour and obviously not put of by the sight of her husband to be in a basque and fishnets.
He laughs, “No, she wasn’t, maybe the opposite, maybe she was turned on. You’d have to ask her that one, we’re still together.”
Donovan recently returned to the role of Frank N Furter for the show’s 50th Anniversary, and reflecting on having to cross-dress for a role, he concedes, “For me it isn’t that unusual. I take on roles and, in a way, being able to lock into a costume or heels enables the character to come out easier; costumes enable an actor to become the character. If you’re playing a drag act you really have to come out of yourself as a performer, the costumes enhance that, they are the last bit of paint that you put on the canvas.
“To get dressed up in drag and be given such a wonderful palette from such gifted designers as Lizzy and Tim is a gift, but I don’t focus on the costumes, I focus on the character, the performance and what makes those costumes come to life; Tick has a journey, this secret that he is harbouring; for Felicia it’s a desperate want for attention, and then there’s Bernadette… There’s a section in Priscilla, which is really touching where Bernadette is sitting down and Tick says, ‘I’ve got a child and I want you to meet them. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’ And Bernadette just says, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’m as jealous as hell’. Priscilla crosses a lot of themes.”
After a second or two of thought, he adds, “Actually, it’s probably easier hiding behind a larger than life character like Mitzi than it is playing yourself, which I do in my concerts, where you are being judged on being you.”
Forced to choose a favourite costume from the show, he decides, “The Gumby costume for I Will Survive at the end of the first act, that was pretty special, but all the costumes were fantastic, there were no bad costumes. As for heels, well, heels are heels, they haven’t helped my back issue, that’s for sure.”
Back issues aside, Donovan remains as passionate as ever about the musical and its message.
“It is a modern musical and a jukebox musical but behind every great musical there has to be a great story. The story of these three characters, set against the struggles they have with the people around them, encapsulates the universal themes of love, hope, opportunity, misfits, and acceptance… all underscored with some great songs.”
That the ‘femininity’ of Mitzi, Felicia and Bernadette is set against an often brutal landscape of warped masculinity is something the actor hopes also has some impact on audiences.
“Australia, this archetypal masculine country where blokes are blokes, is actually the perfect backdrop for this story. It’s always had that ‘scene’ which tends to be part of the culture that comes with sunny beaches and the boys that are bronzed and beefed up. But there is also the antithesis of that, the other boys, the boys from the Mardi Gras scene and Australia’s lip-syncing culture and the type of drag that is almost tongue in cheek. I don’t know whether a film or show like Priscilla brings those together in itself, but certainly, cultural moments like that shift the conversation.”
The bus and costumes, however, remain the talking point for many who see the show and will no doubt continue to do so for some time to come.
“We wanted a show we could move around from week to week, so we had to be true to that. The bus is almost the star of the show, so I guess you start there and think about the landscape it is set against, mostly the outback, but the costumes are so important too and it was a difficult one to get right because they are very Australian.”
He adds, “Remember, Lizzy and Tim had no money at all when they started, but their creativity shone through. These drag acts didn’t have a lot of money but managed to capture the quirkiness of Aussie culture and its melancholic, humourous homage to life. So you don’t need to throw that much money at them but it’s important that the colour and creativity remains. It’s such an important part of the show. I think back to 2009 and the audience reactions seeing them for the first time, they were just mind-blowing. They were like, ‘That is just fucking outrageous’. And that is what Priscilla is, a celebration of life.”
Originally commissioned by Drag! The Ultimate Dragazine 2021
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