Priscilla Queen Of The Desert - The Musical

Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, Monday, November 2, to Saturday, November 7

ANYONE doubting multi-platinum-selling boy band Blue’s talent credentials should look out for their appearance on a forthcoming tribute to James Bond on German television channel RTL.

Rather than cover something relatively simple like Duran Duran’s A View To A Kill the four-piece are getting their teeth into Adele’s blockbusting theme Skyfall.

“We are proper singers,” says Duncan James, one-quarter of the band from a hotel in Cologne. “We wanted to sing a proper song. You can’t fake a song like Skyfall.”

Further evidence of James’s musical chops can be seen in his role as Tick in the touring version of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, which comes to Theatre Royal Brighton next week.

With a soundtrack featuring some of the classic disco anthems of the 1970s, Noel Sullivan, of Hear’Say fame, has described playing Tick as the toughest singing role in musical theatre after playing Galileo in We Will Rock You.

For James it has involved a major physical transformation too.

“I love musical theatre, but I’m used to playing alpha males,” he says pointing to previous roles fast-talking lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago and Warner Huntingdon III in Legally Blonde.

“Tick is an alpha male too, but in a dress. It takes some getting my head around!

“They are amazing costumes – award-winning – but getting into them every night is demanding. What happens on stage and backstage is incredible. From the moment it starts you don’t have time to go to your dressing room. All your clothes are dumped at the side of the stage - I have three dressers to get me into them and the wigs, lip stick, make-up and gloves. Sometimes we only have 20 seconds to change.”

If Blue hadn’t come along James had seen his career being in musical theatre following a memorable West End trip.

“When I was a young kid I was taken to see Miss Saigon with Lea Salonga as Kim and Jonathan Pryce as The Engineer,” he says. “I was in awe at the wonder of theatre – the helicopter coming down was incredible. At that moment it happened for me – I knew I wanted to do something like that, to be a part of the show.”

James studied drama at GCSE and musical theatre at A Level, performing monologues and group productions across the south west of England.

“I was loving it,” he says. “Blue happened by mistake – I auditioned for a band and got into Blue.”

When the band went on hiatus in 2005 James saw his chance to finally get into musical theatre. For his first major role he was offered a choice of Fiyero in Wicked or Billy Flynn in Chicago. He chose the latter, feeling it was more challenging, and has since played the part twice on the West End and once on tour.

He shares the role of Tick with Jason Donovan on the show’s national 2015 tour, owing to prior commitments with Blue and pantomime in Southampton.

He found some common ground within the character of Tick, whose journey to see his young son in the centre of the Australian outback forms the backbone of the show.

“I had the experience of being a father of a ten-year-old and coming out as gay,” says James, who announced he was bisexual in a News Of The World interview in 2009, before publicly identifying himself as gay in interviews four years later.

“When I read the script I knew it was perfect for me. I wanted to put my own spin on the character. Tick is a father, and that the biggest thing I can relate to. There’s a moment where you have to tell a child ‘this is what I do’ – for me it’s being a pop star, for Tick it’s being a drag queen.”

He sees the show as having an important role in increased acceptance in society.

“The three main characters in the story all want acceptance,” he says. “There’s a lovely scene at the end when they’re all on Ayer’s Rock singing a song called We Belong having put all their differences aside, wearing the most ridiculous costumes you have ever seen. It’s one of my favourite parts of the show.”

The choice of music – including classics like Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive – gets the audience on their feet every night.

And it has inspired James to look for another iconic musical role.

“Doing Priscilla has given me a taste for the Rocky Horror Show,” he says. “That would be so much fun...”

Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm matinees Thurs and Sat, tickets from £15. Call 08448 717650.