Scissor Sisters to go to Broadway

Jake Shears is writing the musical using his real name, Jason Sellards

The Scissor Sisters are to write the songs for a stage musical version of Armistead Maupin's chronicle of life in 1970s San Francisco, Tales of the City.

Frontman Jake Shears and touring band member John Garden - son of Goodie Graeme Garden - will write the tunes, with the show set to open in 2009.

It is being produced on Broadway by the team behind the award-winning puppetry musical Avenue Q.

Tales of the City was voted Britain's favourite gay novel in a 2006 poll.

The story focuses on Mary Ann Singleton, a prudish young woman from the Midwest who moves to San Francisco and meets an unusual collection of colourful characters while living at 28 Barbary Lane.

Love lives

It started life as a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle before being collected into a novel in 1978. Five more books followed.

The novels have sold millions of copies worldwide, and were turned into a TV mini-series in the 1990s.

The plot of the musical is expected to concentrate on the first book and the complicated love lives of its 12 characters - including transsexual landlady Anna Madrigal and gay gardener Michael "Mouse" Tolliver.

It is being written by Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony award for best book of a musical for Avenue Q in 2004.