So glorious that some see it ten times - Christopher Gray sees a five star performance

This glorious production of Priscilla, starring the show’s West End crowd-puller Jason Donovan, wowed audiences at Oxford’s New Theatre in the first weeks of its tour. Almost a year later, after an odyssey to rival that depicted in the story, it arrives in Milton Keynes this week, bright, brash and brilliant as ever.

This is a second viewing for me, though not, I know, for many of those around me in the stalls, who talk of five, ten or even more engagements with it. This time, although Donovan seems every bit as impressive as Tick, aka Mitzi, it is the other two members of his outrageously garbed travelling ensemble of drag artists who chiefly impress.

From Richard Grieve there is a beautifully nuanced performance as 50-something Bernadette, who is lured out of retirement for the desert trip. This, you may recall, takes the trio on a 1,700 journey by bus — the eponymous Priscilla, high-tech star of the show — from Sydney to Alice Springs. There await casino-owner Marion (Julie Stark), the wife Tick acquired in a brief experiment with heterosexuality, and the six-year-old son of their union.

Acid-tongued and bitchy as she appears, Bernadette is truly a tart with a heart. This is seen in her dealings with the team’s youngest member, Adam/Felicia, whose outward bravado masks an inner sensitivity and an uncertainty, one senses, about the gay life.

As portrayed, in a series of ever more revealing outfits by the gym-toned Graham Weaver, he supplies the show’s main eye candy. His bump-and-grind delivery of Shocking Pink’s Venus — one of many disco classics superbly performed under musical director Richard Weedon — remains a highlight of the night.

Another is Pop Music, featuring naughty tricks with ping-pong balls, from Asian babe Cynthia (Frances Mayli McCann). A hoot.