Trailblazing actress Whoopi Goldberg is to join the cast of West End musical Sister Act, eighteen years after starring in the original film. Goldberg, 54, has been instrumental in bringing the musical from America to the London stage, and is seizing her opportunity to appear in the West End for the first time before Sister Act ends a seventeen month run to make way for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Wizard of Oz revival.

Reflecting her progression from radical young actress to cinematic grande dame, Goldberg will not be reprising her starring role as firebrand singer Doloris, a gangster’s moll who goes into hiding in a sleepy convent. Instead, she will take over from Sheila Hancock as Mother Superior, the draconian abbess played by Dame Maggie Smith in the original film and its 1993 sequel.

Goldberg, who won an Academy Award for her performance as psychic Oda Mae Brown in ectoplasmatastic 1990 fantasy Ghost, will be appearing 23 times this August opposite star Patina Miller. Dancing nun fans are bound to be out in force (I know it’s my favourite nun-based sub-genre), so dust off your habits and pick up tickets as soon as you can!