Lavish show opening with Queen, plus Queen! (8)
I believe the answer is:
squander
'lavish' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'opening with queen plus queen' is the wordplay.
'opening with' becomes 's' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'queen' becomes 'qu'.
'plus' becomes 'and' (I've seen this before).
'queen' becomes 'er' (abbreviation for Elizabeth Regina).
's'+'qu'+'and'+'er'='SQUANDER'
'show' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for squander that I've seen before include "lose recklessly" , "Fritter away, waste" , "Spend thoughtlessly" , "Use up wastefully" , "Spend wastefully" .)