In 2012 Priscilla Presley said yes to something brand new. At 67, Elvis’s former wife signed on for her first ever pantomime, in a big theater in London.
If you didn’t grow up in Britain, a pantomime is a family Christmas show where the audience is expected to join in, cheering the good guys and booing and hissing the bad ones. Over there it’s a big part of the holidays.
Priscilla had never been to one. “I hadn’t seen a pantomime before, but I did my homework and so I knew how popular they are,” she told the Daily Mail.
So why would Priscilla take on a very British job like that? Part of the answer was already living in England.
Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla and Elvis’s only child, had a home outside the village of Rotherfield in East Sussex, England, at the time. With her were her twin girls, Harper and Finley, who were 4. And Grandma was thinking about them.
This 14-second clip catches Priscilla at the show’s press launch at The Savoy hotel in London in September 2012, months before the curtain went up.
Priscilla Presley at the London press launch
The show was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at the New Wimbledon Theatre in south-west London. It ran from Dec 7, 2012 to Jan 13, 2013.
Priscilla didn’t play Snow White. She played the Wicked Queen.
Yes, the villain. The one the whole crowd boos.
And she took the job partly for those two little girls. “My daughter will be there and I thought about her little ones when I agreed to do this because they’re crazy about Snow White,” she told the Daily Mail.
Lisa Marie said the same thing from her side. Talking to The Times that fall, she said her mom was playing the Wicked Queen, “which the twins are really looking forward to.”
Priscilla went all in on the part. Her costume had a bejeweled horned headpiece and a floor-length gown, and she called it “sensational.” The Daily Mail reported she was “in her element while taking in the boos and hisses from the crowd.”
She had good company on stage, too. English actor Warwick Davis played “the Prof,” and comedian Jarred Christmas played Herman the Henchman. This promo from the theater’s ticket seller has the three of them in the real production, so you can see Priscilla in that royal getup for yourself.
Priscilla, Warwick Davis and Jarred Christmas in the London show
There was a little Elvis in it, as well. During the show Priscilla sang “Trouble,” a song from Elvis’s 1958 film “King Creole.” A fan in the audience filmed her singing it on Dec 15, 2012, and it’s a treat to hear that song come from her.
Priscilla Presley singing “Trouble” on stage in London
Not that she wasn’t nervous at first. Priscilla admitted she’d pictured something cozy. “I thought it would be a small theatre,” she said. Then she went to London for a costume fitting and found out the place seated 1,700 people. Her first thought, in her own words: “what have I done?”
She also had nothing but praise for her daughter when she spoke to the Daily Mail. “Her twins have their own life and she’s an amazing mother.”