After a successful run of nearly three years at the Palace Theatre in London, the award-winning Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is set to close on New Year’s Eve. The fun-loving, crazy-costumed show opened in London on 23rd March 2009 to rave reviews and was nominated for the most prestigious theatre award – the Laurence Olivier Award for best New Musical in 2010, unfortunately losing to Spring Awakening. It was nominated for a further two Olivier Awards and won one for Best Costume Design. The show went on to win several other awards including the Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best New Musical and the BroadwayWorld.com UK Award for Best Actor in a Musical for Oliver Thornton.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is based on the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and was first seen at the Lyric Theatre in Sydney in October 2006. It was highly successful and transferred to Melbourne in 2007, and a year later to New Zealand before returning to its original home. The success of the show sparked worldwide interested for Priscilla, enabling a West End production to open. The London production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert opened just three months after the show closed in Sydney, and met even greater success than its debut down under. The London show is co-produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group and directed  by Simon Phillips. The original cast included Australian heart-throb Jason Donovan as Tick (Mitzi), Oliver Thornton as Adam (Felicia) and Tony Sheldon as Bernadette.

Fans of Priscilla will be delighted to know that it doesn’t all end with the West End closure of the hit musical.  The show is currently playing on Broadway and is produced by Grammy Award-winning actress and singer, Bette Midler, and a Brazilian production is set to open in Sao Paulo in 2012.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert closes at the Palace Theatre on 31st December 2011.