Opening Night: Priscilla

I was lucky enough to be invited as an official guest to the Opening Night of Priscilla.

Now apart from the show - which went PERFECTLY (5/5 Diamonds!), I will concentrate on the other events of the evening.. Namely the Red Carpet, and the After Party!

RED CARPET...

What a star-studded event! And as my fellow showgirl, Tora Hymen, would say, "It was the who's who, and the who's that, of the entertainment industry"!

Terrance Stamp, an original cast member of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (Movie), a number of Home and Away stars, Jimmy Barnes, Barry Crocker, Maria Vanuti, and our very own superstar, Carlotta, was just a small selection of the many celebrities there to show their support for the fabulous new Aussie musical.

Fellow showgirls also attended, such as Mitzi Macintosh, Verushka Darling, Claire De Lune, Kitty Glitter, Portia Turbo, Courtney Act, Chelsea Bun and Amelia Airhead. We all had a ball posing for the photographers of the many major publications covering the event.

After some mingling (and poking out a few celebrity eyes with my DIVA Flower Dress!) we were ushered to our seats - right next to Mel and Kosh (Channel 7 Breaky Show). Now Mel was delightful, but as always I wanted to stick Kosh's head down a toilet until be stopped breathing!

With a performance about to start, the directors and producers made their way to their front row circle seats for the Opening Night extravaganza to commence. Excitement and nervousness, was thick in the air. The lights dimmed and the overture started to loud cheers from the audience.

As mentioned before, I will not talk about the show again, but I will say I was certainly very proud of my friend's performances, particularly Trevor Ashley (aka Cleopatra Coupe).

With new additions/changes to the show, and a seamless run, everyone enjoyed themselves immensely - performers and the audience.

The leads even took their individual bows! Hooray! (Read about my pet peeve HERE!)

After the show, it was then on to the After Party...

AFTER PARTY...

We were ushered along from the Lyric Theatre to the Showroom for a very glam after party. The entrance to the showroom was moved so that we were taken through a "Priscilla Gate". Then continuing around to the left, we took the spiral stairs up to the showroom foyer for entry to the main party room.

The room was impressive, decked out with possibly the biggest mirrorball in the world, smaller mirrorball clusters surrounding it, chandeliers made of feather boas, and a flashing dancefloor. (The dancefloor/stage I found out was a old set for a Ch7 game show - though I couldn't find out which one.. Koshy wouldn't tell me while I continued to threaten drowning him!)

The word around town was that Gloria Gaynor was performing at the party, and this was confirmed by my contacts in the know, however the goss is that she pulled out of the deal... Wonder why...??

The performer taking her place was Charlene.

She is obviously not the singer she once was, and had a very difficult time trying to get the crowd pumped, but managed to get the party-goers behind her when she sang her hit from Priscilla - "I've Never Been To Me"... not once, but twice! She sang the "original" version, then the "tweaked" version, as she put it (ie dance mix).

Of course all the celebs came along, if for nothing but the free piss-up! David Campbell, Bronwyn Bishop, Barry Humphries, Adrian Raschella - the list could go on... were all there, and I was lucky enough to draw their attention with my DIVA Flower Dress.

Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera along (can u believe I forgot!!!), but some of the celebs took pics themselves, so hopefully I'll get a copy sometime to put up on the site.

With all the mingling done, I slipped into something a little more comfortable for the remainder of the night and had a great time schmoozing with the crowd. I even caught up with an old dance lecturer of mine from WAAPA there - Claudia Alessi. (Hi babe!)

Soon it was about 2:00am and we made a move before it got too tragic!

It was an incredible night - as it was promised - and I will never forget it.

Thank you to the producers for inviting me along, and for putting my name in the Official Priscilla Program as an "influence" to their production! I have been very touched..

Make sure you do see Priscilla, it's a landmark moment in musical theatre in Australia, and of course, is again (in a different way) reaching out to mainstream Australia and helping with our community's visibility.