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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/dec/04/remembering-toni-lamond-australian-actor-theatre-stage-legend>
"Toni Lamond helped me fall in love with Australian theatre before I’d ever
stepped inside one.
The legend of Australian stage, who died this week at age 93, had a career that
spanned eight decades, leaving generations of Australians with a Toni Lamond
that feels like theirs: the vaudevillian of the Tivoli circuit; the star of
musicals such as
Anything Goes and
Gypsy; on TV in
Number 96 and as a
frequent figure on variety shows (she even hosted her own).
Growing up in central west New South Wales, I wouldn’t see a professional play
until I was 16, with my first musical a year later (
Grease, in a circus tent
at a showground).
But I’d already learned that theatre was the thing for me. As a child visiting
my grandmother’s house, I discovered a VHS tape of
The Pirates of Penzance
that she had lovingly recorded during a live ABC broadcast. I fell in instant,
dizzying love.
Directed by Craig Schaefer and filmed live in 1994 at QPAC in Brisbane, the
Essgee production was created by Simon Gallaher (who plays Frederic), to
capitalise on the success of the Public Theater’s beloved New York staging
starring Kevin Kline.
This new production took the US production’s sense of fun, but made it uniquely
Australian. Stacked with slapstick humour and tight-panted-irreverence from the
pitch-perfect Pirate King, Jon English, the show draws on Australia’s long
comic traditions, which had been formed on the Tivoli and variety circuits. The
script is interspersed with punny patter, old-joke wordplay and fourth-wall
winking, paired with retro-style close-harmony singing (thanks to girl-group
act the Fabulous Singlettes), which turned the show into what they proudly
labelled a “poperetta”. It’s riotously irreverent, gut-achingly silly and
extremely Australian-accented (it also ends, gloriously, with a megamix).
Crucially, it is also performed at a startlingly high calibre – and Toni
Lamond, as pirate maid-of-all-work Ruth, is its sun and moon, holding it all
together and keeping its heart big, warm and generous."
I’ve seen quite a few Pirates, and that production was indeed excellent. It had
a revival in 2001 that ran until 2003!
Vale Toni Lamond.
RIP,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
