Strip joint owner turns arts patron

Bryan Le Gros doesn't exactly conform to the usual profile of a philanthropic patron of the arts.

He's no NBR Rich Lister with a hankering to burnish his social standing by contributing to the creative sector; instead he's best known as the owner-operator of Auckland's The White House "adult entertainment centre" – ie, a striptease venue (albeit much “classier” than the norm), with a brothel out the back.

So how and why is it that Mr Le Gros – who readily admits that "I know nothing about plays, of course" – is currently playing host to a theatrical production called Famous Flora in his establishment?

“Well, it was mainly because that Elizabeth’s very passionate about this particular lady, she thinks she's got a lot of history” Mr Le Gros tells NBR ONLINE over the phone. “So I thought, ok, it means so much to her...”

At this point, some backstory is clearly in order.

The play's a based-on-fact drama, presented in exuberant music hall style, about the life of Flora Mackenzie, the daughter of an eminent Auckland family who fell into the role of brothel keeper during WWII and continued to play it for more than three decades, becoming known as one of the city's more colourful characters in the process.

It's written and produced by playwright Elisabeth Easther, who's probably still best known to the wider public for her role as Shortland Street's first psycho-murderer, Nurse Carla Crozier, in the early days of the soap.

Ms Easther had been tinkering with her play about Ms Mackenzie for 20 years, after initally writing and performing a monologue about the notorious madam as a drama school exercise.

Last year she decided it was time to stop noodling and get it on stage.

Having been unable to attract funding support from any arts organisations, Ms Easther decided to organise a rehearsed reading to stir interest in the project and loosen the hither-to tightly-drawn funders' purse strings.

However, rehearsed play readings are frequently put on and invariably poorly attended. Something to give the event a bit of buzz was required and Ms Easther hit upon the excellent idea of staging the showcase at the White House.

Not only would this provide a whiff of appropriate salaciousness to the undertaking, the building itself is a rather magnificent neo-classical temple built for the Theosophical Society in the 1920s. The combination would surely pique the interest of Auckland's theatrical community – not to mention arts funders.

With Mr Le Gros amenable, thanks to the playwright's passion for her project and his own sense of the fleeting nature of history – “A lot of people forget these characters, whether it’s Famous Flora or [the original “King of K Rd”] Rainton Hastie, they get forgotten quite easily” – the rehearsed reading was put on in the White House's main strip venue late last year.

It was standing room only.

Mr Le Gros was clearly chuffed to see a different type of patron in his club, of which he is very proud.

“My gosh,” he says in his avuncular rasp, “I went up for the reading and afterwards made a comment to Elisabeth that, 'Jesus, it’s just a different type of person that comes to these things, you know what I mean?'

“And don’t take me wrong at all, but these type of people would be sitting there going, ‘I would never set foot in one of those places’,” he laughs. “‘I never went for any other reason than the reading!’ But how many really did go because, ‘Oo shit, I always wanted to go in there!’”

Mr Le Gros happily recalls some of these punters enthusing about the establishment.

“They stopped me and said, ‘I can’t believe how beautiful this place is, I would never have come in here, but I’ve had a thoroughly good time. It’s classy, the girls are nice, they’re beautiful, the costumes are amazing.'

“They had no idea what it would be really like because they'd seen too many little American strip clubs on TV where you get murdered,” he laughs.

“The White House isn't like that. You're safer here than you are at McDonalds, you know what I mean?”

After the reading, Mr Le Gros told Ms Easther that “if you get the grant and everything’s good, you can use here”.

Although arts funders did come to the party, thanks in large part to the reading's success, the approximately $60,000 from Creative New Zealand and $8000 from Arts Alive wasn't sufficient to mount a professional show.

So Mr Le Gros offered the production the run of the White House anyway – for free.

He clearly empathised with Ms Easther's situation.

“Some people don’t get a break, do they? People who don't quite have enough money and are trying to push shit up hill, if you want to call it that.”

But surely Mr Le Gros also saw the benefits of getting a previously untapped market segment through the doors of the White House?

“Oh no, it wasn’t a money thing, it wasn’t an entrepreneurial thing,” he insists.

“It was Elisabeth’s passion that drove me to say, 'Here, have it, take it, get your dream out of the way,' you know.”

Nonetheless, patrons who attend Famous Flora do get free entry to the strip show that's up and running on the same stage within minutes of the play finishing, and Mr Le Gros concedes he wouldn't be entirely surprised if the sight of “the types of people you would never really see in here” becomes rather more common in the club even after the play's finished its run.

Whatever the case, he's clearly enjoyed having a different type of show in the venue.

“What they did with the stage is quite amazing,” he enthuses. “I mean, the stairway coming up from the lift and all that. They’re very creative people aren’t they?”

Possibly he feels a kindred spirit: “I’m not really totally involved in prostitution – my main thing is costumes and striptease, like that,” he says.

The only “hiccup” involved in having Famous Flora on at the White House is it's meant Mr Le Gros hasn't been able to rehearse his long-in-the-planning, soon-to-be-launched lunchtime shows there as a result.

“We’re going to be doing lunchtime shows, you see, for the first time ever. I’ve always wanted to do them but I was always busy,” he says.

“The idea is for the corporate people to have a lunch and you have entertainment for males and females – you know, not so much stripping but more of a cabaret show.

“You have a bit of a laugh and then you go away after having a bit of a unique business lunch, you know what I mean,” he says.

“So the play has interfered with that a little bit because we have an aerial hoop, you know, and a girl does aerial dancing on it. And of course they’ve used it to hang their lights on, which we didn’t realise they would.

“So we can’t use it anymore to rehearse for our lunchtime shows,” Mr Le Gros says. “But it’s okay, Elisabeth found for us another place with a hoop that we can rehearse in. So it’s all worked out.”

• Famous Flora plays at The White House, 371 Queen Street, Auckland, until 29 November

• Read NBR's review here.