Fierce interest in disciplinary tale

Sara Wiseman plays a convincing dominatrix

It's a fine line between pleasure and pain - so the song goes - and one that obviously whips up a frenzy among supposedly conservative theatre-goers.

Just ask Sara Wiseman, who plays suburban dominatrix Dominique in the one-woman show Lashings of Whipped Cream.

Wiseman performed the role at Wellington's Downstage Theatre last year and dons the figure-hugging latex and thigh-high boots for an Auckland season starting this week.

In Wellington she performed in front of "little old ladies who had a good laugh" through to a block booking of dominatrices who came to a matinee.

The dominatrices invited her to a party but she politely declined.

Similarly, Wiseman hung up on a gentleman who traced her hotel and telephoned to ask if she really was a bondage and discipline mistress because her performance was so convincing.

"We had every type of person you could think off come to see the show," she says. "Hats off to New Zealanders for being so liberal."

Heath Jones, whose theatre company, A Lethal Set, is producing the Auckland season, says ticket sales were fierce even before promotion for the show started. He admits that's part of the reason he agreed to co-produce it with Wiseman. "It has sold more than any other show we've [A Lethal Set] done."

It is more than a decade since writer and actor Fiona Samuel took Lashings of Whipped Cream on a national tour in 1993.

While inviting the audience on a tour of her dungeon - kept separate from the rest of the house by a side door dubbed "the human cat flap" - Mistress Dominique shares her thoughts on her profession.

Described by Wiseman variously as funny, endearing and a very New Zealand story, it poses the question whether Dominique's service is a luxury to fulfil a want or a necessity to meet a need.

Like Wiseman, Jones believes its continuing attraction - tantalising title aside - is a cocktail of voyeuristic curiosity and a genuine desire to understand more about a world kept behind locked doors.

It might be a leap from Mercy Peak's amiable Dr Nicky Sommerville but Wiseman says that's simply the job of being an actor.

Besides, she admits a dominatrix plays whatever character her client pays for.

"So it's like acting - what are you trying to say here?" she laughs.

Wiseman watched and re-watched the documentary video Bound for Pleasure - "it was a very worn tape so it has obviously been taken out a few times" - and read instruction manuals written for budding dominatrices.

She talked to a handful of women in the business and was impressed by their professionalism.

But she says she is no closer to understanding the complex motivations of the clients.

"I guess they get something out of the experience they are not getting in other parts of their lives."

What: Lashings of Whipped Cream
Where and when: Maidment Studio, June 7-24