Cooper and her colleagues - including Fiona Leach, Jennie Norberry, Lucy Jones and Vicki Purcell - used to volunteer their services for different Canberra theatre companies but beginning last year they work together on whatever shows are current, for the companionship as well as the pooling of resources.

And they have their hands full with the current project: Supa Productions' Canberra premiere of the Jerry Herman musical La Cage Aux Folles. They're making 100 costumes for the show, which is based on a French play of the same name that also inspired a Hollywood adaptation, The Birdcage.

The title is the name of the Saint-Tropez nightclub run by longtime couple Georges (played by Jarrad West) and Albin (Ben O'Reilly) which specialises in drag performances by an ensemble called the Cagelles, led by Albin as Zaza.

Cooper says, "It's very busy, lots of bling."

One of the most intricate creations so far has been a white faux mink lined with silver sequins.

Leach says, "We started that before the Christmas holidays, four days before Christmas. It really wasn't completely finished until a week or so before the CAT Awards in February."

All the women pitched in to take turns handsewing in 60 yards of diamante.

Other creations have included gold hotpants a la Kylie Minogue, a feathered headband and an array of frocks in various colours and designs and materials.

But costumes, of course, are only part of the production. La Cage Aux Folles features a tune-filled score by Herman that includes the hit song I Am What I Am and is, director Garrick Smith says, "a great love story, regardless of who's loving who, and a great story about family conflict."

In the show, Jean-Michel (Alex Clubb) - Georges' son from a youthful liaison - comes home with the news that he is engaged, to Anne (Tamina Koehne-Drube), the daughter of Edouard Dindon (Len Power), an anti-gay conservative politician. Dindon and his wife Marie (Michelle Klemke) want to meet their prospective in-laws - Jean-Michel has been somewhat economical with the truth - and the young man pleads with his father to ask Albin to absent himself and to reunite with his estranged mother temporarily for a charade. It's a volatile situation all round, rife with both dramatic and comic possibilities.

But it hasn't been an easy show to mount. Smith says an effort to put it on in 2006 had to be abandoned because it proved too hard to cast.

"It was nearly as difficult this time ... it's a very difficult show to do. You've got to have boys willing to dress as girls who can dance, who can sing, who can act - and who can be convincing girls."

This challenge meant that the number of Cagelles was reduced from 12 to six - and two of them are female.

Smith says, "The audience has to guess which ones."

This makes for big challenges in both costume and performance - the male performers have broader shoulders than the female, among other physical differences, and while the men have to try to look like women, the women have to look like men trying to look like women.

One of the Cagelles, David Santolin says performing in drag is fun but has its challenges, like learning to dance in high heels. He - and the rest of the men - will have to brave extensive body shaving and waxing and will have to learn to do their own makeup.

But he says the whole process has given him a new respect for women and what they endure the name of fashion and beauty.

"I'm a true gentleman - and a lady at the same time!" he says.

Another challenge, Smith says, is to keep La Cage Aux Folles believable. "I don't want the show to be a caricature of itself," he says.

While half of it is glitz and glamour and fun, the other half is a heartfelt story of romance and families - and he wants both halves to be given their due.

But all involved are giving it their best shot and Smith says it will be "a wow of a show" all round.

"We've got a 24-piece orchestra in the pit under Rose Shorney so there will be a huge Broadway sound."

O'Reilly, in his second Canberra show, echoes Smith in saying La Cage Aux Folles is "at its heart, just a love story, full of family values - it's just a particular type of family.

"It's about love and self-acceptance."

An actor since he was 13, he trained at The Actors Centre in Sydney and worked as a professional actor on stage and screen before retraining and joining the public service in Canberra.

But while he thought the acting part of his life was over, he found the wealth of talent and musical theatre in Canberra too hard to resist as a continuing method of self-expression.

He was in Free-Rain's Canberra premiere of The Phantom of the Opera last year and is now relishing a lead role in another ACT premiere.

"Every song is a toe-tapper," he says.

La Cage Aux Folles is on at ANU Arts Centre from November 7 to 22. Tickets $29-$45. Club La Cage (includes drinks and nibbles at interval) $57. Bookings: 6257 1950 or canberrarep.org.au. Three-course dinner and show tickets $75: available from Teatro Vivaldi on 62572718.