Caberet Review

Songbird hits the right note

By CHIP DEFFAA

CABERET is filled with singers. Toni Lamond, currently at the FireBird, is an entertainer. And that's a bit rarer.

With brassy warmth, she might belt out "I Got the Sun in the Morning," then put over a comic monologue in which a woman offers best wishes as an ex-beau prepares to marry someone else.

No belatedly making her New York debut in her 60s, Lamond comes from an Australian showbiz dynasty. The older sister of Helen Reddy, Lamond starred in Australia's original productions of such musicals as "Pajama Game," "Gypsy" and "Oliver." She was the first woman to host a national TV talkshow in Australia.

Her style connects more with vaudeville - in which her parents were long troupers - than with the pop music of her sister, but Lamond does talk about Reddy (with whom she recorded a deut on her new CD, "Still a Gypsy"). And she shares recollections of her parents.

The nostalgic highlights she offers from their act (such as a lugubrious "Graveyard Song") are high points of her own act.

From New York Post's Cabaret Review Friday November 26, 1999