Kings Cross Lights Up !

A party tonight on the new outdoor deck at the Mecure Hotel in Kings Cross kicked off the 2012 Kings Cross Festival that sees 4 days and nights of events in the one acre area that comprises the Cross, parts of Darlinghurst and Potts Point.

Stephan Elliott

Dozens of restaurants , coffee shops and retailers are joining in the celebrations along with pubs and nightclubs. At last count there were over 40 nightspots alone in the Cross and it's side streets. The change the Cross has been going through over the past 5 years has been remarkable. New apartment blocks are springing up like the old Metropole Hotel that has been transformed into million dollar luxury pads.

Glynis Trail Nash,Damien Woolnough,Jennie Brockie

Darlinghurst Road, a past base for drugs,criminal gangs, strip clubs and prostitution rings still has it's gaudy neon strip facade. Turn into elegant Macleay Street and it could be a tree lined boulevard in Paris with it's elegant Art Deco apartment blocks, restaurants , boutiques and decorating shops.

Ignatius Jones & pal

Rebel Russell & Max Rendall

Over the next 4 days until Sunday there will be non-stop activities with a great artistic team under the umbrella of Ignatius Jones who has designed Sydney's famous New Year's Eve celebrations at the Opera House. Fashionistas Damien Woolnough and Glynis Trail Nash have organized a pop-up fashion store, Sebastian Goldspink is curating art shows while man about town Alex Zabotto-Bentley has created installations and window art in 22 store windows. Mandy Sayer and Madame Lash will be giving literary talks.

Margaret Fink & Warren Fahey

Legendary Les Girls performer Carlotta is presenting a one woman show while music legend Warren Fahey has organized several music events including buskers and a big show on Saturday night beginning at 6pm in Fitzroy Gardens with the great songbird Renee Geyer (the lurve Renee in Germany )                                                                                       
At the party tonight along with Lord Mayor Clover Moore were many from the diverse Kings Cross' community that numbers around 20,000 and makes it the most populous area in the country. 3 Hollywood Oscar winning filmsters : Margaret Fink , Rebel Penfold Russell and Stephan Elliot , SBS presenter Jennie Brockie and journalists like Melissa Hoyer, Richard Akland and Australia's top foodies Jill Dupleix and Terry Durack.
Go to the Kings Cross Festival website to get a full list of activities and travel arrangements.
Below : a time lapse video of Kings Cross by the creative team at Virtual Network : www.thevirtualnetowrk.com.au

Drama ! "Your Son Will Come Out Tomorrow"

Trevor "diamonds are for Trevor" Ashley

Sung  to the tune.."the sun will come out tomorrow", these are some of the words from brilliant cabaret performer Trevor Ashley whose new musical revue trAnnie premieres at the Sydney Opera House on December 5th.

Trevor Ashley / trAnnie

trAnnie is parody of the hit musical Annie and written by Phil Scott and Ashley and is the tale of the “hard knock life” of ten year old orphan Fannie who is desperate to have “long-overdue” gender reassignment surgery but must first escape the Sutherland Shire Children’s Orphanage and the clutches of a boozy matron.

But Sydney's transgender community is up in arms and is threatening a boycott of the show saying it perpetuates negative stereotypes. They have also complained to the Anti-Discrimination Board. A spokesperson for the activist group Trans Menace Australia has said she finds "  the panto to be demeaning towards the trans community : “One quick read of the synopsis left me guttered,”

Courtney Act with Danni Minogue

Spokesperson for Transgender Victoria Sally Goldner has said such concerns were valid as the term ‘trannie’ was largely deemed offensive by people experiencing transgender issues.

The Sydney Opera House has issued a statement :
“The title trAnnie is a play on words. It is a play on the musical Annie and combines the letters of Trevor's name into the title. It is also a play on the fact that the central character is transsexual,”
“The show, while being a comedy, shows the transgender character in a positive light and hopes to encourage more understanding of the transgender community.”

Trevor Ashely's star keeps rising with each new production he creates. As an original cast member of Stephan Elliott's musical version of Priscilla Queen of The Desert he also sang the theme song from Elliot's film Easy Virtue that starred Colin Firth and Jessica Biel and has appeared in cabaret at New York's Don't Tell Mama and London's Talk Of The Town.
At the 2009 Mardi Gras he appeared with Courtney Act in the show he wrote Gentleman Prefer Blokes followed by Diamonds Are For Trevor.
 Below is a video of Trevor and Courtney Act and their send-up of Beaches (titled Bitches)

..Meanwhile In Bondi Junction

Tim Draxyl,Kevin Bishop,Xavier Samuel,Kris Marshall

As the Golden Globes unfolded, movie history of another kind was being made at Bondi Junction with the premiere of Stephan Elliott's A Few Best Men. Stephan's latest offering looks set to succeed at the box office if the comments at the after-party are anything to go by.

Rebel Wilson

The Shuttle had to attend the Sydney Theatre Awards but made to the drinks following the movie  and the audience were in agreement.

A Few Best Men looks set to break Elliott's run of bad luck that has seen recent box office flops and a broken leg from a skiing trip which put an end to plans to do a bio-pic on the failed wedding of Prince Lorenzo Montesini and Primrose Dunlop in Venice.

Performances to watch out for- Olivia Newton John , Rebel Wilson , the dazzling good looking Xavier Samuel and Laura Brent who is also working on The Great Gatsby.

Elizabeth Debicki & Laura Brent

The film also sees the return of costume designer Lizzie Gardner who won an Oscar for her work on Priscilla, Queen of The Dessert.

At the premiere: model Tahnya Tozzi (right- a Shuttle discovery) visiting from New York and Malcolm & Lucy Turnbull.

Priscilla Picks Up A Tony Award

Lizzie Gardner at the 94' Oscars

 
Tony Sheldon (left centre) missed out on a gong at the Tony Awards  but Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner have won the Tony Award for best costume design in a musical for Priscilla, Queen of The Desert.

In 1994 the pair won Oscars at the Academy Awards for the costumes in the original Stephan Elliott film.

Norbert Leo Butz.(left) won best actor for his role as an FBI agent in the play Catch Me If You Can.

Sheldon has won awards in the UK , New Zealand, Australia and Canada for his role as transsexual Bernadette in Priscilla and although the musical received moderate reviews in the US it has been a box office Broadway success.

Tony Sheldon Conquers Broadway

Tony Sheldon comes from Australian theatre royalty-the son of actress Toni Lamond and the nephew of Helen Reddy.

He's been wowing audiences from Christchurch to Toronto, London and  New York in the lead role of transsexual Bernadette in Stephan Elliott's Priscilla Queen of The Dessert. Tony won the Sydney Theatre Critics Award in 2007 and the Olivier Award for Leading Performance in a Musical  in England in 2009.

Now he's been nominated for the prestigious US Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and the odds are he will scoop the award. It's the same gong Hugh Jackman won for The Boy From Oz in 2004 which catapulted him into international stardom

Priscilla is the second Australia musical to crack Broadway and although critics were lukewarm about the gaudy colorful romp through the Outback, it's been a runaway  box office success.

Liz Gardiner and Tim Chappel who won Oscars for the costumes in 1998 for the original film are also nominated.
A clip from the London production of Priscilla :