According to sales statistics, tonight’s programme tells us, Ladies Night “is New Zealand’s most commercially successful play”. That, along with another statistic, namely that “the majority of theatre ticket purchases are made by women”, seems to be the main justification for choosing this play to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Court Theatre’s founding – and well worth celebrating it certainly is. The choice of a New Zealand play is, of course, very appropriate. This play has been around since 1987 and since then has been frequently revived and produced both in New Zealand and abroad, including more than once at Court Theatre. Tonight, though, is my first encounter with Ladies Night.

I have no record of how many Court Theatre productions I’ve seen, right from its first days in the Canterbury Provincial Council Chambers, but there are many of which an impression, if not every detail, remain firmly fixed in my memory. The range, resonance and richness has been astonishing, and I’m grateful for the experience as an audience member and, especially, for the three or four that I’ve been personally involved with. 

My two most recent visits to Court Theatre (Jersey Boys and Things I Know to be True) have expanded the variety and broadened my theatre experience even further. Now Ladies Night certainly adds to that variety.

As with any play, Ladies Night’s effectiveness is partly dependant on the director and casting, but here also the nature of any given audience also plays a part. When we reach the interval, I sense a slightly underwhelmed response from tonight’s audience. We certainly laugh at the genuine comedy that is undeniably a major part of the script’s content, but the characters tend to come across as rather two dimensional as they wade through an all-too-predictable plot.  

But I suppose what the majority of the audience has come for is the entertainment of the strip show that will inevitably result, as it did in The Full Monty (some ten years after the first production of Ladies Night), from the unlikely scenario of a group of unemployed, working-class men finding success as professional male strippers. So, after the somewhat predictable ploy of a scene in which the show will not go on (it does go on of course), we get just that – a strip show. As such, this has the audience response rising to fever pitch as each of the four strippers in turn presents their steamy and seductive individual acts, followed by an ensemble routine which ends the play.  

I guess the success of Ladies Night depends on your expectations. If you’re anticipating buff male bodies teasingly and gradually revealed after two hours of gentle comedy, you’re certainly in the right place. All four of the stripper-actors have the physical attributes and performance skills to carry off the show’s climax. And each has a distinctive, if a little stereotypical, character which, in just two cases, is carried over into their strip acts; and all four are at ease with engaging the audience and extracting our vocally frenzied response.

Of the four, Isaac Pawson (Norman) stands out for the most convincing and consistent characterisation, especially in the earlier scenes when all four are required to portray a degree of macho bravado, uncouth behaviour and very amateurish theatrical skills; but not all are totally convincing. The problem with skilled actors trying to convey a lack of acting skills is that, to an extent, it comes across as actual amateurism. And while Roy Snow (Barry), Shadon Meredith (Wes) and Nic Kyle (Craig) all demonstrate effective professionalism in the later scenes, they can sometimes seem effortful in the earlier ones. 

Hayden Tee as Gavin is also consistently convincing with a genuinely comic ability, although his sudden transformation into a fully developed (in every sense), cross-dressing MC at the end, while very entertaining, is theatrically unconvincing. As the loutish Grahame, Will Hall is also consistently persuasive, but his character could have been developed far more substantially than the writers allow him in his brief appearances. Kathleen Burns and Phoebe Hurst, as trainer and club owner respectively, also make sterling efforts at characterisation within the limited scope allowed them. 

Director, Sam Snedden seems content to let the play direct itself. Although I personally have no comparison with any previous production, my general impression is that all the presentation emerges naturally from the script and the actors, rather than from any special enhancement of the drama, comedy and physicality by the director. Although directors can sometimes be overly interventionist, I feel a slight absence of unity of momentum and motivation in tonight’s performance. 

Set, costumes, choreography, lighting and sound are all very effective and unobtrusively supportive. 

The opening night audience is almost as diverse in both age and gender as I would expect at any Court Theatre event, although larger groups of young women are more evident than usual. And it does need to be said that, after the low-ish key response to the first act of Ladies Night, this audience definitely rises to the hype and enticement of the second act with a genuinely appreciative standing ovation before we’re sent out into the notably lower temperatures outside. 

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