Year of the Queen: The Making of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical Read Online Free Page A

is now on to get to Wednesday.
    People are being completely proactive now. Tony, Spencer and I take ourselves away and self-choreograph Shake Your Groove Thing . We just make it to the end of the song when Simon calls us back into the main room, to put it together with Nicki Wendt’s hilarious version of Bob’s Asian wife’s ‘ping pong’ scene.
    We’ve made it to Alice Springs, the scene where Tick finally meets his son. We rehearse it with Scott Irwin playing my son, but he’s around six foot two and it’s beyond ridiculous. Simon’s decided to get a real boy in for the performance. We’re all aghast. The show is peppered with highly adult material, so we resolve to have the child ushered in and out of the performance at appropriate times, so he’s not subjected to our filth.
    On Tuesday afternoon, the child arrives and everyone fusses over him. He’s a pro, having been in plenty of other shows. He already knows his lines, like he’s been drilled by his mother for weeks. We block him into the scenes, and he turns out to be a real show stealer.
    Tomorrow is the performance. To my utter disbelief we’ve got nearly the entire show blocked. It’s utter chaos, but we’ve actually got there. Nerves begin to hit me. It may just be ninety minutes of something we’ve banged together, but to me it really matters that it comes off well. The anticipation is growing in all of us.
    As I look around the group, actors are carrying around pieces of script, gazing vaguely to the horizon as they try to cram another scene in. People hover around the piano trying to squeeze their head around a harmony or melody line. In every spare moment I sing through Lullaby like it’s a mantra.
    At the eleventh hour I’m given another song to sing, Always On My Mind . I don’t know this song well either, and I try desperately to cram the words into my head.
    Wednesday arrives. There are still a couple of scenes to straighten out, and some songs which haven’t been choreographed at all. Everyone’s on edge. It’s a bit like an opening night. The guest list is slowly feeding into the group’s consciousness. We know the English producers, Garry McQuinn and Liz Koops, will be here, as well as publicists, designers, marketing people, Stephan Elliot and John Frost. For some reason, of all the personnel coming, Frosty is the one I’m most keen to impress. I can’t be sure why. Maybe it’s because I feel I owe him.
    We’ve worked together before when I played Cornelius Hackle in his production of Hello Dolly! Back then, he was getting ready to stage Crazy For You . I had my eye on Bobby, the lead role in it. I’d been told by everyone who’d seen it that it was a fabulous show and a great role for me, but it required that the actor could tap dance. I was touring with Hello Dolly for months, so I decided to throw myself into tap lessons and see if I could crack the role. I don’t know if Frosty heard about this or not, but he called me into his office and asked if I’d like to do the role. I said I’d love to but I didn’t know if I could dance it. To my utter dismay he offered to fly me to London to see the show and find out.
    We had a break from Dolly for a week between Brisbane and Perth so I jumped on a plane to see the show and meet the choreographer, Susan Stroman. Half dead with jet lag, I went straight from the plane to the theatre. I plonked myself down to watch the show, and can vividly remember my palms sweating in anticipation as the lights went down and the overture began. The curtain rose and Bobby entered for his first number. Exactly twenty seconds in, I realized that the only way I could possibly do this show was if I’d been dancing since I was a foetus. I felt sick. No amount of tap classes would get me up to scratch for this. Frosty had totally done his dough on me. Shit, shit, shit!
    The next day I had to meet Susan Stroman. Overnight I had concocted a devious little plan to save myself. My mission was to