Unicorn Theatre’s "Priscilla" – a rollicking old time
by Rob Howard
Associate Editor
“You don’t have to be gay to go see Priscilla, but it doesn’t hurt,” says Missy Koonce, Co-director of KCMO’s Unicorn Theatre production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical.“It’s going to be a rollicking old time, a gay old time if you will. It will speak to a lot of people through the music.”
The stage musical version of the cult classic film, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, has 34 pieces of music, including disco songs and dance floor music from Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and others.
This version, by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott, “Really tried to stay very, very close to the movie. A lot of the differences are the scenes aren’t quite as large,” said Koonce. She co-directs the production with Cynthia Levin, Unicorn’s Producing Artistic Director.
Koonce said, “We’re taking it to this small Unicorn space.” The Unicorn Theatre is known for its intimacy. “Our biggest challenge will be how do we make the transitions quickly. The storytelling remains the same.”
The big difference in the stage production is that all the singing is done live. In the movie, the actors lip-synced to recordings of songs by the original performers. In the play, “When [the characters] are lip syncing it’s being sung by three women, called The Divas,” she says.
Just as in the movie, the stage production is a journey of self-discovery and the road trip of a lifetime that will have you dancing out of the theatre. Three friends – drag queens Tick/Mitzi and Adam/Felicia and a transgender woman, Bernadette, who performs with them – hop aboard a battered old bus searching for love, family and the best of drag.
The cast features Kansas City favorite Ron Megee as Bernadette, Francisco Javier Villegas as Tick/Mitzi and Deshawn Young as Adam/Felicia.
Koonce says her favorite part of the musical is when the trio goes into a red-neck bar. “There’s a lot of people who might not approve of drag and by performing there they are winning people over.”
She said she and Megee were once on a theatre tour, ending up in a little town outside of Salinas, Kansas. “We ended up going to a firemen’s ball and taking several firemen to a watering hole. Fun to do it after having lived it in the real world.”
The movie had some very adult parts, but Koonce says even the “ping-pong ball episode” is in the stage version, although handled discreetly.
There are 13 people in the cast, including Villegas’ real-life son playing Tick’s son Benji. “When Francisco and his son auditioned and sang a duet together, it brought tears to my eyes,” said Koonce. Other actors include Mark Liby, who plays Bob, who falls in love with Bernadette; Damron Armstrong as Miss Understanding; as well as Colleen Grate and Shon Ruffin. Angie Benson is the Music Director.
Returning to the challenges of translating a movie from the huge “Outback” of Australia and the giant stages of Broadway theaters, Koonce promised theater-goers a great experience. “We have worked hard with our designers to figure out how to make all that work.” As an example, “You see the framework of the bus and the interior of the bus, but no sides. We use a lot of projections to show us where we are. A lot of rolling set pieces.”
In the end, “The music, actors and the costumes really carry the production.”
Among the songs in the production are It’s Raining Men, What’s Love Got to Do With It, True Colors, Color My World, I Will Survive and many, many more.
The Unicorn Theatre production opens May 31 and runs through June 25. Tickets go on sale May 8 online at www.unicorntheatre.org. The Unicorn Theatre is located at 3828 Main Street, Kansas City, Mo.
Copyright 2017 The Gayly – May 22, 2017 @ 1 p.m.