Lemon in the chorus
After almost 30 years as a performer, it would be assumed Genevieve Lemon had just about done it all. With roles in movies like Sweetie and The Piano, on TV in Prisoner and Neighbours, and on the dramatic and musical stage, it comes as a revelation when Lemon confesses working in Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert has provided her with the opportunity to play something she has never done before.
She is finally a chorus girl.
I have never been in the chorus before and I am having the best time -“ I love it, she says before a matinee performance. It is the apprenticeship I never got to have as I didn’t start off in the big musicals, so I am in the chorus now and having a ball doing it.
While it is true Lemon can be spotted through the ensemble numbers, her scene-stealing moment in Priscilla arrives when she dons mullet haircut and saggy-boobs singlet to play bush hag Shirley.
Shirley’s rendition of I Love The Nightlife regularly stops the show, but there is more grit to the character than might first meet the eye, as Lemon explains.
Early on, I realised I was representing all the people in the audience who say, -˜Fuck you, poofter,’ when I play the standoff with Tony Sheldon, she says. So that part of the character became very important for me, because we know many people do come to this musical thinking just that.
It is a great moment to maybe be a person they identify with and then they see what happens in the course of the scene, and the show.
So popular has Shirley become that she is also expected to grace the stage to have her way with a Kander & Ebb number or two at next week’s Hats Off, one of the red letter events on the Mardi Gras calendar.
It is a surprise and it is a twist and that is all I am going to say, she says, before bursting into a fit of giggles at the thought of what she is about to unleash on the Hats Off stage.
Lemon will be keeping busy throughout the Mardi Gras as she is also doing a return season of her cabaret show, Lemon Tart, along with actor-singer Josh Quong Tart.
For a month of February Sundays, after the curtain comes down on Priscilla, Lemon will leave Shirley at Star City and cross Pyrmont Bridge to take to the stage of the Statement Lounge in the city.
In a cabaret show about bending gender roles, Lemon will sing a range of traditional male numbers, while Tart will take on some diva classics.
It seemed to be ideal to do for Mardi Gras, as it is all about looking at sexuality at different angles, and this is also very funny, she says. I think it has all the elements needed for a Mardi Gras show.
Lemon has also released a new album, Angels In The City. With the cabaret show and on the album, it is just nice to be able to have a proper sing again and show people I can still do it. I would hate everyone to think I sing like Shirley all the time. And the thought of that reduces Lemon to another fit of giggles.
Lemon Tart is on at Statement Lounge, 49 Market St, Sydney, on 4, 11, 18 and 25 February. Bookings on 136 100 or www.ticketmaster.com.au. Hats Off is on Sunday 11 February at the Showroom, Star City. Bookings on 1300 796 330.
