Pop’n’soap national treasure (choose your preferred nation) Jason Donovan turns his hand to theatre production, pulling the strings for this UK tour of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert. Set to light up Cardiff’s New Theatre from Mon 20-Sat 25 Sept, Jase and co have weathered COVID to get this far…

“Priscilla is a celebration of life, and I think that resonates with the current situation that we’re going through.”

Jason Donovan

Priscilla is your first try at producing theatre – was it always your intention to do it with a production close to your heart? And why now, rather than earlier in your career?

Well, as you know, I’ve done the show on the West End, and I did it on tour twice. Mark Goucher came to me a couple of years ago and said, “do you fancy doing the show? Co-producing?” And I said yes – if you’re going to produce something, you need to believe in the product, and you need to be passionate about it. I know the show backwards, and I just felt that this was the right step forward for me, at the right time.
I’m just cohabiting the space with Mark. It’s been a bit more difficult since the pandemic as the [start of the] tour got cut short – and I was probably more involved in that than this one. But I still feel part of the whole setup. As a producer, you sometimes come to the opening night, dip in and dip out, as other people are running this show very efficiently, so I don’t need to be there every night; that’s not part of the gig.

With the three leads in this – now resumed – tour, how involved were you with the casting?

Before the pandemic, Miles [Western] and Nick [Hayes] were with us in the original cast. Edwin [Ray] has just come on this time; I think Edwin was actually the understudy last time around. I went through that audition process quite vigorously, because again, despite not being actually in the show, I still know all of the punctuation marks and the rhythms of it backwards!

What changes to the production can anyone coming to this show expect?

It’s a completely different show. I mean, the script is still the same. But you’ll always have with a different cast – a different interpretation. It’s different costumes because the one that were originally in the West End version have a rights issue… so we’ve reimagined those. The bus is different.
The core of the message is always still the same about diversity and misfits, and I think in a way that resonates even more so with the current situation that we’re going through. It’s a celebration of life, is Priscilla. It’s such an upbeat show. When I saw it in Cheltenham, about six weeks ago when we’d just opened, I think that was one of the first shows to open as a tour. Live music and live theatre are very evocative, and we’re tribal sorts as human beings. So it was an emotional moment for a lot of people.

With the pandemic having stopped the tour on its initial run, so what were some of your biggest challenges on that restart night in Cheltenham?

Er, how long have you got? [Laughter] It’s a long story, that one, as we’d got to start somewhere, you know. We’d obviously set up the capitalisation with the sets, and the cast was essentially in place. However some people dropped in and dropped out. Mark is the creative director of the Cheltenham Theatre, so that was an excellent place to start. And I think a bit of arts funding came in to help shows like this breathe life into the live sector. 
Several things came together that made this whole thing possible. It’s been bumpy for theatre – COVID, as you know, has made getting back on stage difficult. But the easing of restrictions, and self-isolating stopping has made the path a little clearer.

words CARL MARSH