I Am Woman

photo by Rob Rich

One guest at Monday's Tony Awards in New York was the Australian singer Helen Reddy who can be seen in this pic from New York Social Diary on the arm of actor David Hyde Pierce.

Toni Lamond

Reddy is probably best remembered for the massive hit she co-authored, I Am Woman that rocketed her to stardom in the US after a few hard years of living in cheap hotels. The hit changed Helen's fortunes and she had 15 hit songs in the Billboard Top 40 with 3 number one hits.

Helen was at the Tonys to see if her nephew, Tony Sheldon would pick up an award for best actor in a musical.
Sheldon appears as Bernadette in the Broadway box office hit Priscilla Queen of The Desert but he lost out to Norbert Leo Butz  for his role as an FBI agent in the play Catch Me If You Can. Reddy is the sister of Sheldon's mother, the Australian stage star Toni Lamond.

Helen also had an illustrious career on Broadway appearing in Blood Brothers, Call Me Madam as well as a successful one woman show  Shirley Valentine. She nows lives in a Darling Point apartment courtesy of a long time fan.

Go to David Patrick Columbia's excellent New York Social Diary for more terrific pics from the Tony Awards and below is Reddy's famous song : I Am Woman.

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 :