
Members of the Royal Family have long been patrons of the performing arts, with everyone from Princess Margaret to Prince Harry taking in ballets, plays, operas and musicals. But it turns out Queen Elizabeth was once given an extraordinary gift—her very own Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical starring one of her children.
Sir Tim Rice recently revealed the story of the late Queen's private performance, sharing (via the Mirror), that in 1986, Prince Edward—who was an employee of Lloyd Webber's production company at the time—asked his boss "to pen a mini-musical for his mum" for her 60th birthday. The resulting production was "a 30-minute comedy piece called Cricket," the outlet reported, and the lyrics were created by Rice.