Year of the Queen: The Making of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical (14 page)

We move onto
We Belong
. Spud says he’s worried the song is now permanently associated with
Bridget Jones
. I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about, as I haven’t seen the film, but he’s completely reworked the arrangement and it is now a big choral epic of a song. Again, it’s in a better key and the harmony I’m given is good for me. I feel the blood returning to my body.

After lunch the entire cast gathers to sing through the whole show. It’s like a joke. We only started learning this monster yesterday, and now we’re singing through the whole thing from start to finish, complete with harmonies. A lot of the songs have backing tracks and Spud plays along with them. The end result is that it doesn’t sound that far off being like a real performance. I find that my solo numbers are all in a good key to sing but my parts in the group numbers are still far too high.

When we reach the end, we’re all stunned at how good it sounds for day two. The ensemble is dismissed and the three leads stay to polish the principles’ numbers. My voice is ragged and I really, really want to call it a day. On the break I spy Tony taking Spud aside. I hope he works the Sheldon magic on him. When the confab breaks up, Tony makes a bee line to me and says gravely, “He wouldn’t budge an inch”. We’re both a little stunned as we know we can’t be singing way above our ranges like this eight shows a week. Our voices will be shot in a matter of days.

When we return after the break, I’ve got bugger all voice left. We sing through our songs a couple of times, but I’m getting seriously panicked about blowing my voice for tomorrow. Just as I’m about to raise my hand to pull the plug, Spud lets us off the hook. Day two finishes just like day one, with me bolting for the door.

My heart bleeds for poor Nick, who filled in for Daniel yesterday. It’s Wednesday, and he’s relegated back to the ensemble. The disappointment is barely concealed on his face. Understudying must be one of the most thankless jobs in show business. If ever I have an understudy in a show I always make sure they get at least a few shows on. There has to be a reward for all their work. Once they’re secure with what they’re doing in the role I quietly approach them and ask them if they’d like to go on. It might not be technically the right thing to do, but it’s only fair.

Daniel finished in
Dusty
last night and has had three hours sleep. He’s wired, though. He throws himself into learning what he missed out on, picking up his parts effortlessly. When I call him a bastard for being so quick he mumbles humbly that he has a photographic memory. Our songs sound pretty and the three of us put everything we’ve got into them. I’m still nursing my voice though, making sure I have something left for the rest of the week.

At lunchtime, gossip is rife. One story is that we’re the top-selling show, before opening, of any show in Australian history. Another is that after the press launch, the producers kicked in another three million dollars. And the last, and the best, is that the wardrobe department is having trouble finishing the feather head pieces because of the Bird Flu epidemic.

After lunch, Ross arrives to choreograph
Downtown
. He seems nervous. Physically shaking, he sits before the gathered ensemble and introduces how he likes to work. He describes his method as organic. He takes his movement from the individuals in the number, each body suggesting their own unique passage in space. The dancers look inspired.

We listen to the music and Ross’s brain ticks over. His assistant, Andrew, sits to attention next to him, waiting for Ross to provide him with the germ of an idea which he will then teach to the group. They’re an amazingly close team. The dancers throw in ideas and the song begins to take shape. As a non-dancer I’m astounded how a dancer can watch a head-spinningly fast step and then instantly repeat it. For me, learning choreography is like being asked to deliver a speech in Japanese. I need time to find each syllable as it crosses my tongue and must slowly learn how to string this collection of unfamiliar sounds together with any sense of finesse.

Towards the end of the session Dean, Simon’s assistant, gets a call. Simon is on his way to see what we’ve done. Ross is furious. He’s run out of inspiration for the day and desperately wants to go home right now. He knows if Simon appears he’ll want to adjust things, and Ross doesn’t have the energy. He instructs Dean to tell Simon we’ve all gone home, and dismisses us.

It’s Thursday morning and I drag myself out of bed. I’ve been awake all night with yobbos and garbage trucks and restless thoughts of my family. My voice is shot and I’m so homesick for the kids that my head throbs. This is how a junkie must feel going cold turkey. I feel the absence of holding my children in my very blood stream. My body aches for them and I’d give up everything to see them. If this keeps up I’ll be spotted down at the pay phone in a dirty track suit phoning home to talk to them.

Today has been called ‘day one’, the first read through. Strangely, I’m incredibly nervous. Fighting my homesickness and my nerves, I arrive at rehearsals to be confronted by photographers and TV cameras. Thankfully none of them want anything to do with me. Michael Caton is who they really want and he dashes past me trying to take cover, playing a futile game of hide and seek with them.

As I look around, it begins to dawn on me that ‘day one’ has become a circus. Unlike the ‘first read-throughs’ I remember, where it’s a nice ‘sit around the table and read the script’ affair, we have the press, the producers, the creative team and a bunch of ‘hangeronerers’ like I’ve never seen in my life, all filing in like it’s Ramadan at a Mosque. Have things changed so much since I’ve been away? The audience seating that’s been erected would be the envy of any self respecting fringe festival show. The guests, half of whom are already seated and waiting expectantly, will sit facing us for the read. I bloody hope they’re charging admittance. Richard Wilkins roams the place doing perky grabs for morning television.

I look down at what I’m wearing. No one has warned me our first read is to be broadcast on national T.V. and I’m in my dirty cargos and rehearsal shirt. Given a hint of this hype I’d at least have worn a nice shirt. What will Mum
think?

Kath wrangles everyone into their appropriate positions, audience into their seats, the cast into theirs. Tony, Dan and I sit central, surrounded by the other leads and then the ensemble. The audience settles and I see for the first time how many there are. I don’t know most of them, and wonder if half of them haven’t booked through Ticket Master.

Simon steps forward and welcomes everyone. I always relax when he has the floor, and eagerly await his speeches. He thanks Tony and me for being the only surviving members of the original workshops, saying that I was twenty-five and Tony, thirty-five when it all began. He goes on to acknowledge all the designers, writers and producers who have contributed to getting the show this far, singling out Spud as being amazing.

Then, the jewel in the crown of any ‘first day’, we get to look at the set. The designer, Brian Thomson, shyly takes the floor and with a scale model of the set, complete with tiny backdrops which fly in and out, he talks us through how the show will look. He drives Priscilla, the bus, through the tiny stage, like a child playing with toy cars, proudly demonstrating all the things it will do. It goes forward and backward and turns three hundred and sixty degrees. It even changes colour. The side flips up so the audience can see inside. The wheels turn. It has elevators to raise the actors up onto the roof. And it’s about three metres short of a real life bus. The wow factor is intense. Everyone ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’.

Then we get a slide show of the costumes. This show takes its breath from the costumes. They are mind blowing. A rumour I heard was that there’s one head piece which cost $40,000 to make.

After everyone is suitably dazzled by the designers’ display, it’s the cast’s turn to step up to the plate. Suddenly it fully occurs to me why we’ve worked so hard getting all the songs learnt. This is a semi-showing where the nuts and bolts of this new piece of theatre will be unveiled. The producers want to see how their development money has been spent. Now I feel under enormous pressure. Not only are the T.V. cameras on the prowl but the success or failure of this reading will make its way out into the real world in a very tangible way. There’s no room for failure here. Producers are perched above, hawkishly watching their investment mature. Unproductive actors will be swooped on, carried to the side of the mountain and dropped into the yawning ravine.

As the read begins I feel slightly resentful, inhibited and quite nervous. Thankfully the first few minutes of the show for me are mute, and I can gather myself. We sing
Downtown
followed by
Never Been to Me
, where I mime to Danielle singing the song. Then my first scene begins. I quickly realize I don’t have Tick back yet. I can’t find his voice or the feeling he gives me within. I feel a note of panic. I withdraw slightly, burying my face in the script. Next to me, Tony is having no trouble with Bernadette, effortlessly belting out his lines. Dan follows Tony’s lead, making a performance out of this, rather than just a ‘read’. I still find myself thinking, “We shouldn’t have to be doing this!” As the read continues I feel Tick returning. Soon we’re approaching my solo song,
Say A Little Prayer
, and I become very nervous. I don’t even know how to sing it yet, and I am expected to perform it. I feel my voice tighten up and I’m disappointed in how it sounds.

The bonus of performing the ‘read’ is we get an impression of how funny it is. The cast is buoyed by how much the audience laughs and it genuinely feeds the playing of it.

When we finish, the audience scatters, leaving us to scratch our heads as to what the hell that was all about. To be honest I did get a lot out of hearing the reaction of the crowd. I get a few warm hand shakes from various producers which is heartening but I just want to remind them that none of us know what the hell we’re doing yet.

I head to the park for lunch and sanctuary. It’s week one but the pressure is intense. Maybe I’ve just been away too long and have forgotten how it feels.

Without so much as a word about how bizarre the morning was, the afternoon begins with choreography. Now the ‘read’ is over, rehearsals begin in earnest. We pick up where we left off with
Downtown
.

Simon watches what we did yesterday and instantly calls for changes. Ross is wary. So is Spud. One of the changes means taking four bars out of an instrumental break, which means a long night for Spud, completely rearranging and re-recording the backing track. Spud gives Simon a withering look which Simon simply absorbs and then insists it must be done. After a momentary standoff, he gets his way and the rehearsal continues.

Ross creates a kind of short hand for the dancers to describe the movements he’s creating. He names the first set piece, “Fuck You” which is then followed by “Hernia.” The dancers soon catch on to his eccentric turn of phrase and know exactly what he means when he asks them to return to “Furtive Fingering”, “Blow Up Dolls”, “Dog Shit”, or “Mobile Phone”. When they’re run together, the movements all make up the choreography which is
Downtown
. I feel so proud of him as I witness these wonderful dancers awaken to Ross’s rare brilliance.

After work I head to Nick’s place for dinner. He’s generously offered to cook dinner for the lonely guy. A couple of bottles of wine and a good chat eases my homesickness and my anxiety about the rehearsals. It’s not great for my voice though and I go to work on Friday still feeling vocally ragged.

After a recap of
Downtown
we move on to
Don’t Leave Me This Way
, the funeral number. Ross is clearly expected to do what Spud did in the first three days of rehearsal and choreograph the entire show in the next few days. It’s a gargantuan task because you can’t just write it down and then hand it out to learn. It has to be created and taught on the floor. Going from one number straight into another is clearly stressing him out. He presses the back of his hand to his forehead theatrically and says he’s not a machine.

During the break, Trevor takes me aside and privately asks if I’m going to ‘tuck’ during the show. I can only imagine what this is and what it entails. With great earnestness, he recommends I spend the whole show ‘tucked’ as it will get rid of everything once and for all, and I won’t have to worry about my bits getting in the way. Part of me is appalled. He’s suggesting I get rid of what most men do their utmost to enhance, but then my mind flashes back to the auditions in Melbourne where I was painfully aware of a rather unseemly dent in my dress. I can’t be having that in the show. He talks me through the whole grisly process, explaining that you use a certain pair of Bonds briefs to shift the penis and scrotum up under the underside of the crotch, and then you hold it in place with a g-string. He assures me that it doesn’t hurt unless you use a ‘thong’-type support. I’m not sure I clearly understand everything and he promises to bring in the said apparatus tomorrow and show me. By the end of the conversation I’m convinced that this will be my future, eight shows a week, with my poor old penis strapped to within an inch of its life in a place where the sun really, really never shines.

Saturday, and I’ve been given the morning off. It’s a chance to catch my breath as the week so far has felt enormous. When I arrive at rehearsals in the afternoon, I find out that Ross has also had the morning off, though not scheduled. ‘Colemanitis’, I’m told. The stress of the week has got to him, too.

Tony, Dan and I work scenes with Simon. I feel more at home with this, and find it a lot of fun. Simon gives us a basic blocking of the scene and we play with it till it works. The scene involves Felicia singing a send-up version of
Go West
, involving copious amounts of alcohol. Spud informs us that we can’t use the
Go West
melody for this spoof of the song because The Village People’s lawyer won’t allow us to change the lyrics and is appalled that we’d even think of doing such a thing. The rights have been withheld. We’re going to have to think of something else for this moment.