Queen Priscilla Ready to Reign at Palace???

Hang on to your wigs – it will all be official soon. The press launch for the West End premiere of Priscilla – Queen of the Desert is set for next Tuesday 16 September 2008 at the Palace Theatre, where it will open in the new year after the January closure of Spamalot. In addition to dates, we hope to hear more about casting – Australians Tony Sheldon and Jason Donovan are amongst the names that have been bandied about (See The Goss, 1 Aug 2008) – and get a gander at some of the show’s eye-popping costumes and perhaps even the bus of the title.

Based on the 1994 Oscar-winning Australian film, Priscilla centres on Sydney drag queen Mitzi and her two fish-out-of-water friends, Felicia and Bernardette, are heading west across the desert to Alice Springs in their battered old bus, lip-synching their way through a string of disco hits as they go.

The stage version, by members of the film’s creative team, had its world premiere in Sydney in October 2006. Plans for a London transfer, co-produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, was originally announced last autumn (See News, 4 Oct 2007).