Actor-singer Blake McIver goes to a new place for himself — drag — in ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com
Blake McIver vividly remembers his first real introduction to drag.
Although he had been acting since he was a wee sprout — he appeared on three seasons of the iconic sitcom Full House, and originated the role of Little Boy in the U.S. premiere of the stage musical Ragtime — his exposure to The Art of Female Impersonation was limited.
“I had seen a production of La Cage but had never been to a proper drag show,” he admits.
Then one day his dance teacher, Patsy Swayze — mother of you-know-who — was staging a production number at her studio. McIver innocently walked into the restroom and was startled.
“I remember walking to go into the bathroom and seeing 17 beautiful women and thinking, ‘I had made a grave mistake,’” he recalls. It took a moment before he realized all those beautiful women were men.
Now, he gets to be one of those beautiful women. McIver stars in Uptown Players’ upcoming production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the 2011 stage version of the camp cult classic 1994 film about three drag queens — two cisgender gay men and one transwoman — who traverse the wilds of the Australian Outback in a broken-down bus to perform their very urban act for rubes in the provinces. McIver plays Adam aka Felicia (remarkably, not of “Bye, Felicia” fame), who ropes his friends Tick aka Mitzi and Bernadette into the road trip … actually a pretense for visiting the child he has from a failed attempt at heterosexuality. And aside from one gambit on Halloween some years back, it’s McIver’s first foray into drag.
“[Uptown Players] put a lot of faith in me [by casting me],” he says. “They knew I could act and sing, but they had no idea of my drag and dance abilities. And I have to say, in [drag makeup], my features are so prominent I call myself Idina MAN-zel. But we’ve been having a really good time.”
One of the hooks for McIver, aside from the “honor” of doing drag in Texas in the middle of July, is the story itself.
“I think [Priscilla] was the first movie [to explore what is often] a blurred line between gay men in dresses, which is what Tick and Adam are, and a transwoman, like Bernadette, that’s done in a very beautiful, very respectful way. My character is so transphobic at the beginning, and when I read the script I was like, ‘My god, do I really have to say that?’ But all of these issues hit the audience unexpectedly and underneath [there’s real heart]. There is all the glitz, all the fun, all the glamour, but it tells a real story about what parenting looks like when you’re gay, and there’s almost a gay-bashing in the show… Being able to hit all those beats in one show, one informing the other, is great for an actor.”
Even before he donned one of the 20-plus bougie-glamorous costumes he wears as Felicia, McIver was a fan of the movie, and enjoys the chance to sing songs that were already old-school when he was still wearing short pants. Without knowing all the songs’ firmament in the lip-synch/disco canon — among them “It’s Raining Men,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Don’t Leave Me This Way” and “I Will Survive” — he was immediately drawn to its queer appeal.
“I immediately responded to the campiness of the lyric from the Charlene song in the movie [which is not in the stage version, “I’ve Never Been to Me”]: I’ve been to Nice and the isle of Greece / While I sipped champagne on a yacht?!? How could you not?!?” he says. “I’m a huge fan of variety shows, and there’s one line we sing as a trio on ‘Color My World’ that sounds like a Burt Bacharach horn section with the words added. It feels like we are jumping right out of The Dean Martin Show!”
In a strange irony, the film of Priscilla debuted in the U.S. the same year as another signature event in McIver’s life: Barbra Streisand’s return, after a 27-year absence, to the concert stage. His obsession with La Streisand, after seeing the HBO special that filmed her concert, forms the basis for a one-man cabaret McIver will be performing for a one-night-only concert the same week Priscilla opens at the Kalita.
“It’s a celebration of that entire world tour that started in Vegas on New Year’s Eve 1993/New Year’s Day 1994,” he says. “I delve deeply into this one concert and what was happening in my life at the time,” as a young proto-gay coming into his own, as countless before him, while listening to Babs belt out “A Piece of Sky” and “On a Clear Day.” But though he sings a concert entirely performed by a woman, he does it as Blake.
“I perform it as a boy the entire time — there is no impersonation, no drag element,” he says. “It’s very much in the vein of when Rufus Wainwright did Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall.”
Which ties into most gay boys’ first exposure to drag in a roundabout way: “In my show, I get into this in my actual experience wrapping a towel around me and singing ‘My Man’ into a bathroom mirror after the first time I saw Funny Girl,” he says. “I go to the personal level [of what Streisand means to me], and get into the mechanics of what she does that I think is special enough to give her lasting power over a six-decade career.”
And he doesn’t need a dress to make you believe it.