Tour, West End stage possible for ‘Sex Fiend’
PA Wellington The play “The Sex Fiend” is set to make a nationwide tour and may appear on London’s West End after a successful shift to the State Opera House in Wellington. The farce, written by Danny Mulheron and Stephen Sinclair, cocks a snook at trendy liberalism, as an inept male sexual harassment officer tries to juggle a feminist poetry meeting with a visit from his redneck Palmerston North cousin. “The Sex Fiend” attracted 2300 people to a three-day season at the Opera House after packing Bats Theatre for three weeks.
The popularity of the show in Wellington had the promoters, Paragon Arts, interested in a tour, and Fortune Theatre in
Dunedin wanted rights to produce the show, Mr Mulheron said. Meanwhile, Michael Codron, a West End producer who has presented another Wellington hit, “Ladies’ Night,” is following the progress of the play with interest. “It possibly looks good for London — there are big producers .over there that may pick it up. We will go over next year and try and hock it off and get everything going,” Mr Mulheron said. The success of “The Sex Fiend” had Mr Mulheron slightly mystified, although he said he and Mr Sinclair wrote the play with hit success in mind.
He thought the play’s appeal was as unpretentious entertainment which attracted people who had
never been to a play before.
“I reckon masses of people have a real antipathy to the word art — it has a touch of elitism. There are some people who will go, but most people will say when art is mentioned that it is a bloody rip-off,” he said. The play had a rocky start.
“We had a lot of trouble casting it. People said ’it’s not my type of humour’, they didn’t like the content, ripping into the liberal Left.”
Mr Mulheron hoped the play’s success would encourage other young playwrights. Other Wellington theatres needed to adopt a more flexible approach to new work rather than structuring their seasons rigidly to accommodate sponsors.
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Press, 4 November 1989, Page 16
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343Tour, West End stage possible for ‘Sex Fiend’ Press, 4 November 1989, Page 16
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