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 :