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 :

Priscilla's Debut In the Big Apple



Tony Sheldon



On Sunday evening the successful Australian musical Priscilla Queen of The Desert opens on Broadway at the Palace Theatre with a host of Aussie stars in attendance including Guy Pearce who starred in the original film, Jackie Weaver and the show's writer Stephan  Elliot who will accompany Olivia Newton John to the premiere.

The brilliant Tony Sheldon who wowed them in London, Canada and New Zealand takes the lead role again and Better Midler is co-producer of this production helping fine tune it for a US audience

By all accounts the New York production has been receiving an enthusiastic reception during the week of previews.

What of the girls who inspired the original story and film ?.

Simone Troy and Monique Kelly were the two stars of Les Girls, the Kings Cross all male review that packed out a theatre in Sydney during the 1960s and 70s. Every night of the week the two drag stars trod the boards on a tiny cramped stage and presented a gala performance to a wide-eyed audience of heterosexuals who couldn't quite believe the dozen sexy, leggy gals with hips and boobs before them were all men.

Simone and Monique tried several times to leave Les Girls but the theatre's owner, the Kings Cross crime king-pin Abe Saffron had them both beaten up.

Eventually the pair managed to set out on their own  as the novelty of Les Girls wore off and the show went into a decline in the early 1980s.

Simone had ambitious plans and financing his own show set off to London and the Wimbledon Theatre with 12 strapping Australian lads who transformed nightly into gorgeous leggy beauties.

Wimbledon Theatre

 The production was a sight to see as the Shuttle did on the opening night. With little cash left Simone was unable to promote the show and the audience consisted of about 200 local residents of nearby nursing homes bussed in with free tickets.

What they witnessed resembled a Busby Berkley musical with a tall and colourfully lit staircase down which the 12 beauties-Simone leading the charge-descended in a flurry of long legs, feathers and sequins. Half way down the staircase turned into a waterfall as the audience sat transfixed.

Let's hope the New York critics are kinder to Priscilla than the one London critic who attended Simone's Les Girls Wimbledon premiere and who slammed the production in an outrage that female impersonators-and colonial ones at that., were  gracing the hallowed boards of Wimbledon

On the up-side the British travel company Saga Holidays that specialised in pensioner vacations gave the show a raptuous write-up and organised day outings to the show.

Simone eventually retired to the Gold Coast in Queensland and Monique still lives in Kings Cross.