Year of the Queen: The Making of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical (25 page)

The overture begins. A surge of nerves washes through the company and a steely focus sets in everybody’s eyes. The curtain rises and the crowd instantly applauds the sight of the illuminated Sydney harbour bridge. Then the Divas descend from the roof singing
Downtown
. This brings the roof down and the first eight bars of the song are completely inaudible. Dancers hit the stage and the routine begins. My cue approaches and my nerves turn to dread. “Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up.” Then it’s my turn to hit the stage. I push through the flitter curtain and make my entrance, steadying myself as I go. My head pounds with adrenalin and I work hard to concentrate on my performance and not my nerves. The song goes well. I make my on-stage change and then head off to finish the rest off stage. The song ends and the audience roars. Now for
Never Been To Me
. I race to my moving platform and stand waiting to be shoved onto stage. I strike my pose and before I know it I make my debut as a drag. My legs are shaking beneath my dress and I hope to God no one notices. As I run off from performing the song, I feel a sense of relief, like I’ve left a good proportion of my nerves back there in the song. I make my change into the funeral, feeling slightly more relaxed. This is the kind of curve I want to be on. By the end of the show I don’t want a single thread of anxiety left in my body.

The show runs more smoothly than it ever has. We don’t need to stop once. The jokes seem to fire and the dramatic moments feel like they’re hitting their marks. When I feel uncertain of how I’m going, I remind myself of Stephan’s words.

By the end of the first act my energy is waning badly. My voice feels hoarse from all the coughing and I’m not confident at all singing the gentle stuff. I find myself retreating into an idle whenever the focus is not on me, just to conserve what little energy I’ve got left. Although I
feel
like I’m going okay, I’m struggling to match the enormous energy that Tony is belting out. Once again his sheer brilliance and experience is coming to the fore. He owns every part of his performance and he squarely connects it with the audience. Dan is going really well too. He’s so well cast for the part, and he oozes sexuality through the entire show, winning hearts as he goes.

Tick is a hard role to place. Bernadette and Felicia have all the jokes and the flashy moments, Tick has the secrets and the drama. My job is to resist the temptation to join in their party and offer a different dynamic within the trio. It’s a much subtler performance and one I hope captures the audience’s hearts and imagination.

After
Always On My Mind
I lead my son off stage and through a doorway in the flitter curtain. Last night when I reached this moment we both ran straight into a flat, which blocked our way. We bounced backwards with the force. I understood that this was my path to my next quick change behind the bus, which gets me onto the lift and up to the top of Uluru. After last night’s accident I’ve assumed they’ve changed my path without telling me, so tonight we run straight off stage into the side wings. I rip off my clothes so I’m wearing nothing but stockings and bolt for the back of the bus. But last night’s version was wrong, so by the time I go to run to the back of the bus, there is no flat there to conceal me from the audience as I run from the wings. The lift cue is fast approaching and there is no alternative but to race, nude, bar a pair of stockings, in full view of the audience, across the stage to the back of the bus. I take a deep breath and take the plunge. Troy is in fits of laughter and asks what the hell I’m doing. The change is too quick to explain, but I hope dearly that no one saw the strange little naked flash streak across the stage.

We reach the finale. Tony, Dan and I swap relieved glances as we mount the scissor lift in our Opera House costumes. By the time we reach the pinnacle of the lift, I see that the audience is already on its feet. We haven’t even finished the show and they’re giving us a standing ovation. For the first time tonight, I breathe deeply. I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had some rotten old opening nights where the audience has just hated the show and it’s a terrible feeling. Tonight, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they have loved it.

As we head down to take our bows the volume of the cheering is overwhelming. It’s like a rock concert. We stand for what seems like ten minutes taking it all in. I hunt through the crowd for Annie’s face and find her beaming up at me. I wave to her and she blows me a kiss.

When the curtain finally falls the company collapses into each other’s arms, as if we’ve just presided over a successful lunar landing. Simon has come up on stage for the bows and is pumping with excitement. I hug him and whisper in his ear, “We did it!” and we share a moment’s celebration together.

The excited love fest soon disperses and everyone heads off to get beautiful for the party. I shower and change into the D&G suit Fernando wrangled me, still wondering how much it will all cost, and head off to the party at the Casino showroom.

I arrive to a solid mass of people and thumping music. As I push through the crowd, I’m slapped on the back and complimented as I go but there’s only one opinion I’m interested in. Annie is somewhere in the crowd and I all I want is to find her. At first I fear I never will, as the crowd is so huge and densely packed. Then, halfway to the front, I see her nursing a glass of champagne and chatting. I rush over to her and we embrace.

“That was fantastic”, she says. I can tell she means it and I now feel like I can relax. I resolve to drink two glasses of red and then disappear.

The atmosphere is charged and strangely anonymous. Annie and I prowl the room to try and connect with the cast but it’s very hard to find anyone. Usual practice for an opening night party is for the producers to get the cast up on stage and introduce them one by one. This has been abandoned for some reason tonight and it makes for a very disconnected mood. There’s no focus to the party at all.

I hook up with my agent, Lisa and have a yack. I meet Barry Humphries which is a huge thrill. I do a post mortem with Liz, one of the producers. But before long, the exhaustion overtakes the adrenalin and I ache to go home.

Annie and I slip out of the party and head back to Coogee. For the first time in three weeks we lie in bed and talk. We deconstruct the show, talk about what works, where it falls short and what needs to improve. She tells me what she and the kids have been up to, and for a good three hours I feel like a real person again. Before we know it, it’s five a.m. and the kids will be up soon. I don’t care though, the monkey is off my back. I can fall down dead and the world will still turn. Opening night is over.

Chapter 20

Year of the Queen

Usually when a show opens the creative team’s job is pretty much done and they exit - stage left. The exodus of the creative team on
this
show is like the scramble of shoppers for a department store Boxing Day sale played in reverse. Our Sunday matinee is devoid of a single member of the creative team. A lonely feeling. All these fabulous guardians who’d been working tirelessly to help get the show up have en masse, upped and left us.

I positively limp through the show, having nothing left of a voice and bereft of any energy reserve, and as I drive home afterwards, I feel incredibly excited by the prospect of a day off.

School holidays finished a week ago, so Annie and the kids head off to Melbourne tomorrow to get Hunter back to school. We spend our last night together, rolling our eyes at how little we’d actually seen each other these last three weeks. I’m secretly relieved that I’m going to get some quality sleep in their absence and I’ll hopefully be able to shake off this bitch of a flu.

On Monday morning the reviews appear and at best can be described as “mixed”. My jaw drops to the floor as I read them. Were these guys at the same show? Not a note of the genuine screaming, stomping standing ovation we saw at the end of the show made it into any of them. Bewildered, I read them over and over. One of them even suggests the producers lacked imagination because they couldn’t come up with a better name for the show. Not being that aware of Sydney reviewers, this comment alone gives me an insight into their worth.
What the hell else would you call it?
I feel like calling up this Einstein to ask what her brilliant suggestion would be. A quick poll around the cast on Tuesday reassures me that the reviewers in question aren’t held in much esteem up here. This is confirmed when my mother-in-law sends me a review from an Auckland paper which raves about the show and makes a point of calling the Sydney reviewers ‘snobs’ for their ‘cool’ take on the show.

I drop the family at the airport on Monday afternoon. I feel empty having to say goodbye to them again, but cheer myself with the thought that between now and when I have to be in at the theatre on Tuesday night I will not get out of bed.

Still wracked with guilt from not having given a single thing to any of the cast for opening night, I begin to concoct ways to make it up to them. I consider wine and flowers and personalized gifts but all this requires me getting out of my sick-bed. Then a brilliant idea strikes me. I’ll get them a male stripper.

Besides me, there are only four other straight guys in the cast and even they’ll appreciate the fun of it. I get on the phone and call the number from the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages for strippers. I speak to a gangster who takes my details, making it sound like he’s writing them on a napkin. I ask him several times if he’s sure he’s got everything and he gets snappish with me. “Yeah, yeah mate, she’s sweet.” I request a fireman and for extra cash I ask that he goes ‘all the way’. I compose a poem for him to read, which explains that I was too sick to get them anything last week and that this is to make it up to them for my lack of opening night love.

Tuesday night rolls around and I practically shake with nerves and excitement as seven o’clock approaches and I have to meet the stripper. I’ve organized with Kath that she call a company meeting for the entire cast and crew in the rehearsal room, so there’s no chance that anyone will miss out. I shepherd the stripper to a hidden dressing room where he changes into his fireman’s outfit and when everyone is assembled in the rehearsal room I lead him in. His costume is so convincing that everyone just thinks he’s a real fireman and they’ve all been assembled for a drill. He’s pretty hot, so he quickly gets everyone’s attention. Then he reads out the poem. Confusion spreads across the assembled faces. “What the…?” As the poem progresses, people begin to catch on. Anticipation mounts in the room until finally he hits ‘play’ on his C.D. player and begins the strip. The room erupts into squeals like thirteen year old girls at a pop concert. The stripper takes various females from the audience and gets them to remove certain items of his costume but this isn’t what the cast want to see. They want one of the boys up there. It takes the stripper some time to work this out but when he eventually does, the room goes completely wild. This is the perfect way to begin the week. The show is still crawling on its way to learning how to walk, and we’re all still exhausted from our marathon build up. But this event sends everyone on their way feeling happy and eager to get into it once more. I feel happy that I have given them something back as well.

*

In a strange way the work had really just begun. For the next three weeks we did what we should have been doing in previews: examine our performances, listen to the audience, work the jokes, hone the scenes, test the pacing. It was an exciting time because you could feel the show getting stronger and starting to swing.

Just as we were beginning to feel like we were on solid ground, Dan had an ‘unfortunate incident’ and broke two bones in his hand. This immediately put him out of the show for six weeks and Nick Hardcastle was forced to step in and take over. In a show like this, it takes several weeks, even months to train up an understudy. At this point, none of the three leads’ understudies were officially ready, so the shock of Dan having to go off was intense.

Luckily, Nick had been involved early on and had been doing his homework. He stepped into the fray one Saturday matinee and quite literally saved the show. Without completely knowing the lines and never having rehearsed some of the scenes before, he made it through with pure determination and tenacity, and he distinguished himself as being a remarkable performer by delivering one of the most incredible feats I’ve ever seen by an understudy.

Ross disappeared from the show completely, leaving us with the legacy of a bunch of fabulous routines, drilled with military precision by Mark, our dance captain.

Simon returned for a few whirlwind trips with the promise of tightening the show in the future and implementing re-writes of some of the scenes. As the season progressed, I became aware that Tick was lacking not only in jokes but also in substance and I began to lobby for more of both. Simon assured me that he was aware of this and that it would eventually happen.

Spud made a few appearances to give notes and to tighten the odd piece of music. A couple of muted notes of praise from him made me feel that he was pleased with where I’d finally got to vocally.

The show seemed to attract celebrities on a regular basis. Sir Elton John watched one night and came back stage for a photo opportunity and to tell us how much he loved it. I almost missed meeting him altogether as I was busting for a piss when the curtain fell. I raced back to my dressing room to unburden myself but of course it was the piss that would never end. I could hear Kath tentatively calling me from the corridor, “Jeremy… he’s here… are you coming?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!!!” I yelled, desperately trying to choke it off.

Hugo Weaving came as well. Having him watch the show was nerve wracking but a real thrill to meet him and to chat about the show and the role.

Nick Hardcastle’s six weeks in the role took us up to Christmas, which for me marked a whole year of being a part of this show. The end of the Year of the Queen. In the very same week as last year - the week before Christmas, I found myself composing a eulogy to another dear friend who had just died. The Year of the Queen tragically book ended by two funerals. I applied successfully to the company to have a night off so I could attend the funeral in Melbourne. Now I was confronted with the strangest feeling. Giving the role over to my understudy, a role I had created, a role I’d invested so much of myself in, and now I was handing it over to someone else to play, exactly one year later. I felt like I was pushing a little paper boat out onto a lake. As I left Sydney, I had an empty feeling. It would only be one night away and tomorrow I’d be back on stage again - and would be, it seems, for the foreseeable future. But what I was actually doing was forever relinquishing the exclusivity of being Tick. I was happy it was in safe hands and I was proud to share Tick with my extremely capable understudy David, but somehow, it just felt like the end.