MELANIE C, the chart-topping star of the biggest girl band of all time – The Spice Girls – is to make her theatrical debut in BLOOD BROTHERS. Her opening performance was on Monday 26 October and marks the first by a Spice Girl in a West End musical.

Liverpool born Melanie will star as Mrs Johnstone in Willy Russell’s legendary West End smash hit, one of the longest running shows in musical history. Melanie will follow in the footsteps of Barbara Dickson, Kiki Dee, Carole King and Helen Reddy in taking on the iconic role in the year that BLOOD BROTHERS celebrates its 21st birthday at London’s Phoenix Theatre.

Melanie won universal acclaim as one fifth of the Spice Girls, the group who captured the imagination of the world with their brand of girl power and brilliantly infectious pop music. The Spice Girls led the way for future girl bands like Girls Aloud, Atomic Kitten and the Pussycat Dolls – with Melanie’s trademark kicks and searing vocals at the fore of their unprecedented success.

As a solo artist, Melanie has gone on to have the most successful musical career of the quintet, having released four albums, earned nominations for BRIT and ECHO Awards and charted at the top of Billboard Dance Chart in America.
Melanie holds the position for most UK No 1 singles by a female co-writer. She is third after Lennon and McCartney for the most UK No 1 singles by a British co-writer and is the only female to reach the UK No 1 spot as part of a quintet, quartet, duo and as a solo artist.

Melanie has recently staged a hugely successful sell-out reunion tour with the Spice Girls. She has also recently announced two guest appearances at concerts at the Royal Albert Hall: the first, on 25 October, is for the PRS Music Members Benevolent Fund and the second is in aid of the Caron Keating Foundation on 1 November. Earlier this year she become a mother for the first time and is working on her fifth studio album.

TICKETS HERE!

The stars (including The Boat That Rocked and Notting Hill writer/director Richard Curtis) turned out for March 24′s long awaited first night of Priscilla Queen of the Desert at London’s Palace Theatre. After opening to acclaim in Australia in 2006, the Stephen Elliott-directed transfer has received equally excellent notices from London’s drama critics.
 
“London has never played host to a musical pitched on a higher level of gayness and camp comedy, transsexual barrier-breaking and bitchy, witty drag-queenery, than this ingenious adaptation of the sensational film of the same name. At a time when escapist musicals are all the rage, here’s a rare one that takes you happily out of yourself and into daring places your wildest fantasies might never dreamed of visiting,” wrote Nicholas De Jongh in the Evening Standard, while Benedict Nightingale of The Times said: “There’s energy, fun, tunefulness and, above all, the most outrageous swirl of costumes that I, who have seen La Cage aux Folles and even boggled at Ian McKellen’s Widow Twankey, have yet encountered.”
 
In the Daily Express, Simon Edge wrote: “A full-cast rendition of Go West makes The Village People look restrained, while the disco anthem Don’t Leave Me This Way becomes the soundtrack to a high-camp funeral. But all wrapped up as a shiny, pinkbowed package, this sumptuously dressed show works gloriously, with its parade of ever more jaw-dropping costumes an utter feast for the eye. Loud, lewd and lavish, it’s about as subtle as a smack in the teeth with a didgeridoo, but who cares when it’s this much fun?”
 
Based on the Oscar-winning cult film starring Terence Stamp, Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving, the musical follows the adventures of two drag queens and a transsexual as they drive their decrepit bus from Sydney to Alice Springs, performing their extraordinairy show in the outback as they make the journey. The London production stars Jason Donovan as Tick, Tony Sheldon as Bernadette and Oliver Thorton as Adam.
 
www.palace-theatre.co.uk