Sheldon shakes off retirement for spot in the ‘Choir’

by Helen Musa

Tony Sheldon… “I’m only in four scenes, but my character is a catalyst.” Photo: Phil Erbacher

WHEN I read that Tony Sheldon, one of the stars of the coming show “Choir Boy”, had “come out of retirement” to play a role, I was astonished.

For Sheldon is from such a famous showbiz family that you’d hardly think the word “retirement” to be in his vocabulary. 

The son of Toni Lamond and the nephew of Helen Reddy, with no fewer than 1800 performances in “Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical” behind him, including on the West End and on Broadway, Sheldon is nothing short of showbiz royalty.

But it was true, as I found when I caught up with him by phone to his home in the Blue Mountains.

Years of treading the boards as the transitioned character Bernadette in “Priscilla” followed by an uninspiring part as Grandpa in the musical version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” had taken their toll.

“I quit the business over three years ago,” he says. “I wasn’t getting any joy out of it any more. I was getting grumpy, I was just unhappy, and I’d been acting since I was seven years old, so I thought: ‘What’s the point of continuing?’”

An additional factor was that, while based in New York for eight years doing “Priscilla”, he was aware of his mother’s increasing health issues – she is just about to turn 91. 

“I thought, now is the time to be quiet in the Blue Mountains and take care of mum,” he says.

“It’s been wonderful and I fully intend to go straight back to it after this.” 

But the play “Choir Boy” beckoned. Penned by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Oscar-winning writer of “Moonlight”, its story is interwoven with a cappella gospel hymns. 

Sheldon gets to play the schoolmaster and, as I remind him, the last time he played a schoolmaster was in “Fame” 23 years ago, so he’s got form. 

Now he plays Mr Pendleton, described in the casting booklet as “mature, adult, elderly, Caucasian, late sixties to seventies”.

His character, he tells me, teaches at the all-black high school Charles R Drew Prep School for Boys – they’re like military schools and very macho. 

Such schools take kids on scholarships, so that the students are diverse – “Different people held together by the music and their faith”.

But competition is the name of the game and as the dramatic focus falls on a young gay man Pharus, the gifted leader of the school’s choir and as they prepare for a fundraising gala, he is taunted with homophobic slurs which almost destroy him. 

Not quite. Enter Sheldon’s character.

“I’m only in four scenes, but my character is a catalyst,” Sheldon says.

Mr Pendleton is brought out of retirement and comes back to the school where he was once a great supporter of civil rights and, as a white male, an “ally”, but now he teaches a liberal arts course, seeking to raise a conversation with the students about history and society. At one point he sort of takes over the choir, a showbiz joke as, unlike Sheldon, Mr Pendleton is totally unmusical. 

The show, co-directed by Zindzi Okenyo and Dino Dimitriadis, is full of exciting movement and “choral-ography”.

But the most excitement is in the performances by the choir members, played by Darron Hayes (who also played Pharus in the US), Zarif, Gareth Dutlow, Abu Kebe, Tawanda Muzenda, Quinton Rofail Rich and Theo Williams – all glorious singers, Sheldon says.

“They’re fantastic kids, a lot making their professional debut. It’s wonderful that there are these kids of colour in this country who are trained,” he says.

“It’s as if we’ve turned a corner in this country. It’s a good news story and it’s important to me that I’m a part of it.” 

“Choir Boy,” The Playhouse, March 29-April 2.

First published in Canberra City News website, March 21, 2023