N.Z. money helps finance London play

Press, 20 October 1986, Page 16

N.Z. money helps finance London play

NZPA staff correspondent London If present-day Londoners find the bedroom antics of French aristocrats as entertaining as nineteenth century magistrates found them outrageous, a group of New Zealand speculators will make a tidy sum. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Christopher Hampton’s play, “Les Liaisons Dangereuse,” based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, has opened at the small Ambassadors Theatre in the West End. Just over a third of the financing came from 25 investors in New Zealand. LaclosFs novel, written in the form of a series of letters, scandalised France when it was published in 1782. Forty years

later it was condemned by a criminal court and publicly burned. It is a tale of treachery and deceit, of sexual corruption and blackmail. Although now regarded as a literary classic, the less broadminded might concur with the opinions expressed by the French judges 160 years ago. The money raised in New Zealand was handled by Strada Holdings, the Auckland-based company which has financed or part-financed a string of musicals in London, New York and Australia to the tune of $45 million. Les Liaisons Dangereuses is the first ’’straight” play Strada has been involved in. It was a very different proposition, Strada’s London office manager, Janet Lee Martin said.

”We are dependent on more of a selective audience. Rather than tourists who want to watch a show, we are relying on the home audience.”

Advance bookings had set a record for the Ambassadors, said Alastair Smith, general manager of the company staging the play.

“Liaisons” was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford last year before transferring to that company’s theatre at the Barbican Centre in London. ”It was off and on the programme for a year and was incredibly well received. - Whenever they said there would be another dozen performances it was sold out before you heard about it,” Smith said.