Sixty years after Carlotta ignited Sydney’s Kings Cross in the legendary Les Girls cabaret extravaganza, Australia’s most beloved showgirl is back with what’s being billed as her final curtain. The show is called Carlotta: The Party’s Over, a fabulous farewell as the Emerald City bathes in Mardi Gras Festival pizzazz.
But fear not ... Carlotta has announced her swansong before, and as we sit down to chat I sense she’s not ready to hang up her sequins just yet. “Retirement is for people who’ve given up. As long as I can do something, I’ll do it,” she confesses with a cheeky smile. “I can’t do the big shows anymore, but I’ve just signed on with my mate Craig Bennett for a run of stand-up comedy gigs in RSL and Leagues clubs!”
There’s no stopping Carlotta and the supposed finale we’re talking about today will see her performing in an intimate theatre just around the corner from where the magic all began; where young Richard Byron donned eyelashes, bustier and feather boa to intoxicate audiences as Carlotta. The all-male revue, in which beautiful boys transformed into jaw-droppingly stunning dancing girls, famously launched Carlotta’s showbiz career.
“It went for 36 years. I thought it would be a novelty, we were amazed,” she says today. “The idea of Les Girls was to look like Las Vegas showgirls, but we were blokes. People were mesmerised.”
For Richard, as she was then, it was the start
