A Toney Show from Toni and Tony
"Well she's a worker," says Sheldon as he and his mother munch lunch in a break from rehearsing her one-woman show Times of My Life. "You have to give her that."
"Yes," says Lamond. "You do. I'm a hard worker. And let me tell you, I have to be with him directing. I'm doing tai chi now because he's even given me choreography!" She manages to look simultaneously outraged and pleased as punch. Sheldon chomps on regardless.
"It's really about managing the words," Sheldon finally says. "It's not exactly ... " he mimes an arabesque from the sitting position. Like most things about him, it's effortlessly funny.
Lamond chortles and agrees. "Yes, he's really saying - you go here and you go there, so I'm not wandering around with no purpose. Which I'm wont to do, I might add. And it makes it so much easier for me, otherwise it's a mountain of words and it's difficult to remember which lot goes where."
Sheldon explains further: "Unless you do learn it - the moves and the lines - there is an unfortunate tendency to fill in with too many words while you're wondering what you ought to be saying next. It's structured for drama."
"It's true," says Lamond with a sparkling grin. "I can't be let loose or I'll say the first thing that enters my head."
"The trouble is," says Sheldon, "There's a lot for her to say. She came in at the tail end of vaudeville, the beginning of TV, the club scene, J.C. Williamson, the Tivoli. It's a matter of where you start and what you leave out."
Lamond is nodding. "I suppose it is extraordinary, looking back, but I didn't really think so at the time. You just do it, don't you? What really helped me - I realised much, much later - was that because I worked in vaudeville and variety, I became a very quick study. And that really helped later on - especially when I was doing summer stock in America. We had to learn shows so quickly and if you already knew them or were known to be a quick study - you got the work."
She beams - making it sound that easy must surely be part of her talent?
Sheldon nods. "Absolutely. You were told the sketch - and you knew them all anyway, so learning different catch lines or twists was much easier."
[page]"I never saw a script until Pajama Game when I was 24," Lamond says. "That's how I ended up on Graham Kennedy's show. And I worked with Tommy Trinder too. He said to me - anything that comes into your head: say it, I'll always play off it. And he did. It was the early 50s and it was the first time daily headlines and news stories came into comedy. Until then it was mostly standard stuff - nothing topical. But he was different. He found out in a minute who the locals were and what the local stories were. Now everyone does it - and visiting stars hire writers here to supply their local content - but he did it all himself.
"Do you know, when Bette Midler came this time she immersed herself for four weeks and hired writers before she did her first show. That's being a real pro - not many like that any more."
In essence Times of My Life is a potted history of Lamond's extraordinary showbiz career. It began for her at the age of 10 and continues to this day. She has worked with and for anyone who is anyone from J.C. Williamson onwards and there is hardly a musical of note that doesn't have her name on the poster.
A partial list reads like a who's who and what's what of Australian entertainment (and American too). Try these for size: Gypsy!, Pajama Game, 42nd Street, The Pirates of Penzance, My Fair Lady, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, High Society, Shout!, Oliver, Mame, Cabaret and Hello Dolly.
On television, she was the first woman in the world to compere her own topical evening show - In Melbourne Tonight; she starred in The Don Lane Show, The Mike Walsh Show, Homicide and No. 96 and in the States, she appeared on Starsky and Hutch (the real series, not the movie), The Bob Newhart Show, Murder She Wrote, Love Boat, Highway to Heaven and on and on and on. The woman is indefatigable.
"Well, yes and no," she says with something approaching wistfulness. "I have a bit of a problem with arthritis in my knees these days. And that's another reason for the choreography - so I can do a lot of the show in my armchair but I do get around a bit. I don't want to seize up completely!"
Lamond has no regrets, however, at least not about her career, particularly when she sees what young performers have to contend with in the showbiz of the 21st century.
"So much now is about stuff like Big Brother or Australian Idol," she says. "Young kids have their hearts set on getting on those shows and it's not the way to a career. You don't learn anything that'll be useful to you. If you're lucky you might get a record out of it. But if you don't make an immediate success, they drop you like a hot potato."
[page]It wasn't like that for the young Lamond who nevertheless didn't see a fully fledged musical until she was 16. "It was Rosemarie she recalls. "I went along and for the first time saw a show with a story and characters. Never for a moment thinking I'd be part of that world."
But like all good showbiz stories, there's a fairytale element to this one. "In 1967 J.C. Williamson had to fill 12 weeks at Her Majesty's in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide," says Lamond. "Dame Margot Fonteyn was supposed to be coming but she got delayed, or something. And they had three dark theatres and a little show to put in it but no overseas stars to play in it."
Those were the days of the visiting stars, of course. Often over the hill or simply out to swan around the colonies being feted and making a heap. It was, at that point, unthinkable to open a major show without an imported "name".
"It's true," says Lamond. "But this was just a little show - Pajama Game and the thinking was - it couldn't hurt to cast with locals just for the three months. So they did and it was the first time since WW2 that Australians actually starred in a local production."
The rest is - as usual - history. Pajama Game ran for nearly three years and Lamond's star was born. Now it's been burnished all over again by son Tony into what they describe as a "warts-and-all" celebration of a life lived well if not always wisely.
"There have been dark times," says Lamond. "I do talk about them, because I think you have to be honest. And if I can't be honest now..."
And for the rest of it (there are stories to fill several books, which is what Lamond is doing in her spare time) you'll have to go along and see her show - accompanied by Michael Tyack on piano - and marvel at the force of nature that is Toni Lamond.
Times of My Life, Ensemble Theatre-Christine Dunstan Productions, January 10, 2007 to February 25; www.ensemble.com.au or 9929 0644; then Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, Penrith, May 1-5; Whitehorse Centre, Nunawading (Vic) June 25-30; other dates and venues TBA
