Priscilla Queen of the Desert the Musical

The new musical based on the Oscar award-winning film, Priscilla tells the story of Tick, Bernadette and Adam, a glamorous Sydney-based performing trio that agree to take their show to the middle of the Australian outback.

Priscilla Queen Of the Desert The Musical is a heart-warming, uplifting adventure of three friends who hop aboard a battered old bus (nicknamed Priscilla) searching for love and friendship and end up finding more than they could ever have dreamed. With a dazzling array of outrageous costumes and featuring a score of dance-floor classics, this new musical is a sensational journey to the heart of fabulous.

"A big-hit musical. I welcome Priscilla with open arms. Priscilla never loses its spectacular, helter-skelter momentum. It offers a joyful antidote to a world of hatred and violence"
The London Evening Standard

The cast for Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical in London from 8 March 2010 features Jason Donovan as 'Mitzi/Tick', Don Gallagher as 'Bernadette', Oliver Thornton as 'Felicia/Adam' and John Bowe as 'Bob'. All casting is subject to change.

"Insanely euphoric... wildly contagious" The Daily Telegraph

"The plot involves three 'gender illusionists', or drag queens, driving from Sydney to Alice Springs to do a show, in a big pink bus they call Priscilla. The musical loses a lot in translation: the original movie's low-budget charm, poignancy and humanity. On the other hand, with the camp-o-meter turned up to 10, if not 11, it's a wildly colourful and exuberant piece, though about as subtle as a slap across the face with a 16oz kangaroo steak... The purely dramatic interludes are lame and lumbering, but the big song'n'dance numbers are a treat: Go West, I Will Survive, Hot Stuff and other anthems. The costumes, by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner, complemented by Ross Coleman's clever choreography, have a deranged near-genius." The Sunday Times

"Eye-poppingly extravagant" The Guardian

"The drag-act comedy Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in this musical adaptation, imported from Australia to the West End is padded out with a huge synthetic wodge of disco hits, more than 30 cover versions in total... pumping up the volume and the feelgood factor every three minutes or so... This show is certainly a gaudy, glitter-strewn spectacular. The bus is like a giant couldnt-be-camper van... The costumes are equally flamboyant... The problem is that no amount of carnivalesque exuberance can conceal that the dialogue is woefully thin and unfunny. Tick and co's banter and bitching is so parched of wit that I started to see mirages visions of half-decent jokes shimmering on the horizon while just about managing to endure the strained double entendres, feeble puns and curiously sour, not to say misogynistic snipes." The Independent on Sunday

"Energy, fun... wisecracks galore" The Times

"I liked the original 1994 Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert film starring Terence Stamp, about a group of drag artists making an epic bus journey through the Australian Outback so that one of their number could be reunited with his son... One thing that the show cannot get across is the idea of a desert, which is a shame, as the film's success depended on the contrast between the flamboyant protagonists and the spectacular backdrop... Along the way I came to have some regard for Tony Sheldon as the ageing Bernadette and Oliver Thornton as a young drag artist with attitude, but, at two and a quarter hours, their journey seems a wearyingly long one. There are some great numbers but they are just bolted on to the work, rather than written for it in the way the big showstoppers were for the comparable but eminently more enjoyable La Cage Aux Folles." The Sunday Telegraph

Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical is written by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott and is directed by Simon Phillips. Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical made its world premiere in Sydney in October 2006 and has subsequently wowed audiences and critics alike in Melbourne and New Zealand to become the most successful Australian stage musical of all time. A Sydney return season due to popular demand will commence in October 2008 and there are plans for a North American production to open in Toronto and another in Germany in Autumn 2009. A Swedish production will open in 2010.

Priscilla in London previewed from 10 March 2009 and opened 23 March 2009.