Priscilla

I finally got out to do some Christmas shopping yesterday, so our tree no longer looks completely bare and destitute. I bought a few items for Dave, and a box arrived from my father and stepmother in Florida, so we added their presents to the mix. (We already opened our gifts from Dave's parents, and my Mom sent a welcome gift of a more financially liquid nature.)

Last night, Dave took me to see "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" on the West End. I've been hesitant to see the stage show, because the movie is one of my favorites -- and whenever you love something, seeing it adapted into something else always seems unsatisfying. In this case, the adaptation was fun, with lots of incredible costumes and glitter -- but it definitely felt more superficial than the movie. A tale of two drag queens and a transsexual making a road trip across the Australian outback in a rattletrap bus, the movie has a lot of heart. Audiences care about the characters, their backgrounds, their trials, relationships and individual personalities. The show reduces them to caricatures, all so relentlessly flamboyant that they don't seem very real. Maybe that makes them more palatable and less challenging to mainstream audiences. Is it possible that despite all the sequins, the stage "Priscilla" is actually less gay than the movie?

Just as we sat down for the show, I saw the news on Facebook that my former employer of 20-plus years is selling the division of the company where I worked. I find this news profoundly depressing. It's even more depressing than being laid off myself. It seems to signal an end to everything I knew in journalism -- the management values under which I worked and prospered (for a while) at the newspapers that I still, on some level, love. I feel for my friends who are about to undergo this change.

(Photo: Christmas decorations on Carnaby Street, Soho.)