Actor extraordinaire Wade McCollum is heading to town in a dress made of flip-flops and a song in his heart. Starring as Tick/Mitzi in the first national tour of Priscilla Queen of the Desert should come easy to the talented performer with a strong background. (He's been seen in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Angels in America, The SantaLand Diaries and Dracula.)
Adapted from the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the musical version tells the story of two drag queens and a transgender individual hitting the road together for a gig in Alice Springs, a resort town in Australia. Along the way they encounter crazy characters and lots of adventures, keeping it a gay old time all the while.
Windy City Times: Hi, Wade. How did your career get started?
Wade McCollum: I dropped out of high school to become a professional actor. I went to school in Ashland, Ore., and that is where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is. They taught a class when I was a junior then I realized that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I have worked ever since. It was a lightning bolt. When you find your calling you find your calling!
How I got from role to role is hard to explain. It is such a nonlinear bizarre path. It has been quite an adventure.
WCT: I read you were in Jersey Boys.
Wade McCollum: Yes, I performed in San Francisco and then went to be in Cabaret, which led me to this and many other projects. It was a hard decision for me to leave Jersey Boys and I never got to make it to Chicago with the cast.
WCT: You have been in so many iconic gay roles. How did that happen?
Wade McCollum: I guess it came to me when I was 24 and I saw a theater that I had worked for doing Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I had just seen the movie and knew it was something I was built to do. I sing rock 'n roll and it takes me over. I don't know if it's because I grew up in it, but I feel it is the last place where we can express ecstasy and it's encouraged. I knew that role in Portland would be a turning point for me. I feel that sent me on a path for doing strange outsider roles. It is wanting to be accepted. That is the theme of many gay shows.
WCT: You are new to the Priscilla cast?
Wade McCollum: It is the first national tour and a new cast so everyone is new to it except Bryan West, who plays Adam [and] did the show in New York. I never saw the show there. I was out of town. We are all fresh. This is a great group of people.
WCT: Describe your character.
Wade McCollum: Tick is amazing. It is a rare treat to get to play a character with rich complexity in a piece of pop musical theater. He is a father, a husband and a gender illusionist. He has had a great career, life and child. He makes his living as a drag queen and has for a while.
I feel he is kind of a big kid who doesn't really want to grow up. I think he's running from the fear of rejection from his son. I think there are layers to it but he's really scared. He's forced to deal with his son. In that way he is the reluctant protagonist. It is through his journey that we complete the road trip. I think like anyone who is confronting a huge life change he's scared.
It's a fun part to play because there is a lot going on. On top of it all this is a hallucinatory piece of drag art. The two things together make it so much fun to perform for me. I get so many different colors even though it is a musical and fluffy. I get to invoke a lot of things from various roles I have played in the past. He's a lot things rolled up into one.
WCT: It has pretty much the gay playbook for songs in the show.
Wade McCollum: [Laughs] It is the gay club playbook from the past thirty years, maybe forty years now, my god time is flying!
WCT: Bananarama's "Venus," Madonna's "Material Girl" and Village People's "Go West" are all on that play list.
Wade McCollum: Yeah and a lot of disco tunes. There's "It's Raining Men" and I get to sing "Say a Little Prayer." There is some great music. It is a jukebox musical so there are some blatantly superfluous numbers but there is also some very clever usage of past songs to fit the characters inner emotional life. It is cool to look out into the audience and see 50-year old ladies in boas dancing and guys reliving the fun they had 30 years ago. The songs are in a different context and the orchestra rocks.
WCT: So boas are encouraged?
Wade McCollum: Boas are encouraged, fake eyelashes are encouraged and, God help you, glitter is encouraged! They do make a pre-show announcement that if you are wearing any large wigs or headdresses to take them off and put them under the seat in front of you.
WCT: We have a local performer who wears a pineapple wig that might block people.
Wade McCollum: That's cool. I hope she comes!
WCT: I will tell her to. Do you have a favorite costume that you wear? I love the flip-flop dress.
Wade McCollum: The flip-flop dress has become part of gay icon film iconography so that one is really fucking cool to wear! The only thing I want are the little flip-flop earrings which I don't have. From wig to bottom of the feet I am probably approaching nine or ten feet! My platform shoes are stupid high. Of course, I wear it into a small-town bar.
There are lots of great costumes. The one at the end is pretty amazing. It has a Marie Antoinette wig that is four feet tall with an ocean so there are the seven seas. On top is an old-timey sailing ship like someone might be discovering the New World on the old wig. Then down below I am wearing a ginormous contraption. It is basically a metal skirt that is seven feet wide; then combined with the other two dresses, it creates the Sydney Opera House. It is kind of a spoiler to talk about it but this is a piece of engineering that is whimsical, genius and artistic.
WCT: It is like you are wearing a set on yourself.
Wade McCollum: Exactly—or a small semi truck!
WCT: Is there a bus that is brought onstage?
Wade McCollum: Yes; the eponymous Priscilla is huge and comes apart in five pieces. It goes from city to city with us. She moves around and is impeccably designed. She has all sorts of tricks and bells and whistles. The side lights up with animation. It is really rich.
My earliest memories are growing up on the road in a rock 'n roll band so it is really fun to be doing a road-trip musical.
WCT: On tour, no less.
Wade McCollum: On the road feels like home.
WCT: Are there going to be special events at the gay bars?
Wade McCollum: I hope so. Our cast likes to party and does "love the nightlife," like in the show. Whether official or unofficial we will be creating events wherever we go!
Kick up your heels and head to the desert at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, 50 E. Congress Pkwy., through March 30. Visit www.broadwayinchicago.com for tickets and showtimes for Priscilla Queen of the Desert before she sashays away.
