Passion and laughter at birth of a new play

By SUSAN BUDD

Flora MacKenzie was a dress designer in the 1940s and 1950s, designing and selling clothes for Auckland's upper crust from Ninette Gowns in Queen St.

She was also a notorious madam, plying a very different trade at Ring Tce in St Marys Bay.

Actress, playwright and Herald columnist Elisabeth Easther has dramatised her story in a play, Flora. But a new theatrical work does not fly perfectly formed from the personal computer direct to the stage and audience acclaim.

All too often new New Zealand plays appear raw and unfinished, their plots and characterisation fuzzy, in comparison to overseas hits which have been finely tuned through a long process of workshops and previews.

Money - or rather the lack of it - is the reason. Local theatres cannot afford to workshop a play, so that a director and actors may test the dialogue and play with the structure.

Playmarket, the script advisory service, came to Easther's rescue and funded a three-day workshop in Auckland in June.

The cast of eight, director Stuart Devenie, dramaturge Simon Bennett, two producers and the writer gather in a church hall. Chairs are moved round to represent a piano and even a revolving musical bed, the centrepiece of Flora's bedroom.

I arrive on the afternoon of the first day in the midst of an animated group discussion about virginity and the status of a madam of a brothel. The presence of the musical bed makes Easther's thesis of Flora's lifelong virginity suspect to me, at least, but I am impressed by the knowledge displayed of brothel etiquette.

Devenie performs a gorgeous Joan Crawford twirl, bending to straighten imaginary stocking seams, in a demonstration of a move to Danielle Cormack who is playing young Flora. He has played the wildly camp Frank'n'furter in The Rocky Horror Show, so has vast experience in such matters.

The play moves between scenes of the old Flora (played by Elizabeth McRae), who is addicted to the bottle and the Bible and in trouble with the law, and the young woman gaily partying with her friends and American servicemen.

It quickly becomes apparent that the wartime scenes are more entertaining by far than the static scenes of old age. Devenie suggests that the old woman share the stage with her younger self, handling props and continuing actions. She does, and it works.

Day One ends with two jeans-clad young actors, Paul Glover and Marek Sumich, as mannequins in imaginary sequinned dresses parading before American naval officers to hoots and wolf whistles.

On Day Two, the temperature rises with fierce argument on a scene in which Flora's rather nondescript suitor, Bob, proposes. But there is a condition, that she seal their betrothal by granting him sexual favours that night. Strict gender lines are drawn in the impassioned discussion.

Glover takes up the cudgels on his character's behalf, defending Bob's behaviour against the women's charges of emotional blackmail. "Bob is a hopeless romantic," he insists to female jeers.

Devenie points out that because of what Flora sees going on downstairs in the brothel, she does not want to turn into one of the girls. "She is terrified of sex," he says. Producer Teresa Sokolich agrees. She worked for two years as receptionist in a massage parlour and felt similar distaste for sexual activity.

Actor Stelios Yiakmis, who is vocal in the discussion, insists that perfect love exists only between mother and child and that between a man and a woman it is always conditional. He neatly sums up Flora's life: "She will not grow up, but die on the cross of virginity."

Easther, quiet in the face of criticism, finally explodes: "It does not need to stand up to this kind of analysis. They are human and fallible."

Flora fears sex, she says, because she watched jockeys hold the mares' heads while they were mounted at her father's stud farm. And the longer a woman keeps her virginity, the harder it is to lose, she adds.

Brenda Kendall, mistress of the earthy one-liner, declares: "We want sex. I used to read Truth and get horny. Get it on - let's workshop it!" Amid ironic cheers, Easther quietly admits, "I am a prude." No sex please, we're Kiwis.

Devenie and Bennett umpire, posing awkward questions, seizing on some assertions and rejecting others. It is exciting, hilarious theatre for the onlooker. And it changes the play, refining the characterisation and altering the structure as the scene, written as two, becomes one. It is stronger and more dramatic.

Day 3 marks the end of the workshop with a final run of the reshaped play.

The cuts and alterations in the juxtapositions of scenes result in greater irony and dramatic tension. The play that lay limply on the page springs into life. And Flora is now a dark comedy, more marketable to local theatres that choose comedies over serious plays as more likely to attract audiences.

We watch a video recording of a 1970s television interview with Flora.

It is a shock to see the tough old bird who even in youth was no beauty, after witnessing the exquisite Cormack in the role. "If she was a virgin, I'm Brad Pitt," I think.

Afterwards Easther reflects on the process: "I found the workshop amazing," she says. "I was at a low ebb because the Creative New Zealand grant had not come through, but their passion, skill, knowledge and care made me feel optimistic."

She did not mind the barrage of criticism because she did not feel it was aimed at her personally. But she felt naked doing it. "I am a fully clothed person," she says.

Flora has left no dependants, so Easther feels free to fictionalise her life and to manipulate the facts.

"It is important to make Flora a warm, attractive personality - a cross between Noel Coward and Heidi Fleiss [the infamous Hollywood madam]. It is too hard to stick to facts; you have to have dramatic licence."

Funding permitting, Flora will make her bow at the Herald Theatre in 2001.