Video | Priscilla Queen of the Desert in Hong Kong – a backstage look at the hit musical

If you like The Adventure of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1993) – an Oscar-winning road movie that follows a trio of drag queens across the Australian Outback in a lavender-painted bus – chances are you will enjoy the musical that is stopping off in Hong Kong for almost a month starting on September 29.

First adapted for stage in 2006 by the original director, Stephen Elliott and co-author of the musical’s script (known as the book), Allan Scott, this production comes from South Africa, where it ran between April and June this year.

The story is pretty straightforward: Tick, a drag queen in Sydney, receives a call from his wife to meet their son in a small resort town. So he invites two friends – Bernadette, a recently widowed transgender and Adam, a peppy, wild drag performer – to come along, camping out on a bus called Priscilla.

What transforms the musical into a glamorous spectacle are the lights, colours, energy and, of course, those tunes. As in the film, Priscilla features an array of iconic drag-friendly pop songs spanning three decades including Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls.

“The songs are chosen to make us remember a time or a feeling,” says the play’s music director Bryan Schimmel.

But just great songs are not enough.