Has "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" conquered London's theater critics? Not exactly.
The sequin-spangled musical, which had its gala opening Tuesday, is adapted from the 1994 Australian movie about two drag queens and a transsexual on an odyssey across Australia's Outback. That film helped make a cheerful brand of kitschy camp a major Aussie export, and the subsequent stage version was a big hit Down Under.
Now the show has landed at the West End's Palace Theatre, former home to hit musicals including "Les Miserables" and "Monty Python's Spamalot."
The musical stars Australian singer and actor Jason Donovan as Tick, a slightly tattered drag artiste who travels from Sydney to Alice Springs in a battered bus for a reunion with the son he barely knows. On the road he and his companions _ drama-loving diva Adam and mature transsexual Bernadette _ encounter hatred and love, animosity and acceptance en route to a show-stopping musical finale.
"Priscilla" has an almost infallible formula for fun _ a heartwarming if slender story, fantabulous costumes and a karaoke roller-coaster of a soundtrack featuring pop and disco classics from "Downtown" to "I Will Survive."
The show is Australia's most successful musical, and has world-conquering plans _ a North American production is due to open in Toronto later this year.
But London critics had a mixed reaction. The Times of London's Benedict Nightingale was won over, praising the show's "energy, fun, tunefulness and ... outrageous swirl of costumes."
The Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer acknowledged the show "makes 'Mamma Mia!' look like Chekhov," but loved its "insanely euphoric and wildly contagious vulgarity."
"The fastidious and the squeamish should avoid this show like the plague," he said. "Everyone else will have a ball."
But some found the high-energy show relentless, like being run over by a 100-mile-an-hour Party Express.
Michael Coveney in The Independent called the show an attempt "to cash in on a jukebox musical format without much wit or cleverness." Coveney said Simon Phillips' production was "slick, well-organized and fairly enjoyable," but found its "tired old showbiz camp" dispiriting.
In The Guardian, Michael Billington dismissed "Priscilla" as "a synthetic spectacle."
"Although the show is eventually about a father-and-son reunion, it never touches the heart," he wrote.
Many critics had good words for Australian actor Tony Sheldon as the dignified but lonely Bernadette, the role played memorably by Terence Stamp in the film.
Donovan _ one-time paramour of pop princess Kylie Minogue and the big name in the cast _ got mixed notices. Some felt he was bland, although Spencer found him "engagingly gauche" and Billington said he "lends Tick the right air of paternal longing."
The bus _ which transforms from battered aluminum to glittering hot pink and reportedly cost $1.4 million _ won raves, as did the eye-popping costumes, 500 in all, which incorporate every imaginable shade of fur, feathers and sequins.
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On the Net:
http://www.priscillathemusical.com
