THEATRE REVIEW: Famous Flora

This fictionalised account of the career of notorious Auckland madam Flora Mackenzie – which for extra frisson is being staged at The White House, a striptease venue with a brothel out the back – gets off to a storming start as cast members, who have been mingling with the punters as they’ve been seated, suddenly erupt into a medley of WWII-era songs from the stage and amongst the audience.

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It’s an exuberant introduction to this fictionalised account of the career of a young dressmaker from a prominent Auckland family who became an accidental brothel keeper during WWII (apparently, US service men didn’t understand the servicing they received from Flora’s patriotic staff was gratis) and then kept right at it for another three decades.

The play – which in style splits the difference between drama and music hall, with several songs throughout and plenty of sharp, laugh-out-loud double entendres – takes place in two time periods: during the WWII heyday of Famous Flora’s and at the establishment's end, when the cops are finally forced to stop participating in the vice and start policing it.

Thus we have two Floras – the young, feisty, glamorous model played by Kate Elliott and the old, still-feisty-but-hopelessly-alcoholic version by Yvette Parsons – while the rest of the cast (Fraser Brown, Kip Chapman, Kevin Keys, Jess Sayer, Joseph Wycoff) play associates of the madam that remain a constant in her life through the intervening eras.

The cast attack their roles with an infectious verve and all register strongly (though I trust the strength of Ms Elliott’s vocal delivery on opening night – presumably to counteract acoustics that tend to favour the venue’s generally more visual fare – has become less shout-y as the season has progressed).

The costumes by Elizabeth Whiting effortlessly evoke the two eras in which the narrative is set, John Gibson’s music injects great energy into proceedings, and the lighting and set designs of, respectively, Nik Janiurek and Daniel Williams use the limited resources at their disposal to great effect.

The venue itself, a neo-classical temple built for the Theosophical Society in the 1920s, is a huge asset to the production, both in terms of the building’s beauty and the invaluable, subject-appropriate atmosphere its current use supplies (it’s worth noting the price of admission also gets any attendees who wish to linger into The White House’s normally scheduled show once the briskly paced 80-minute play is over).

It does, however, also present some challenges for a production that involves dialogue rather than gyrating – those aforementioned acoustics, for example, and a space that includes a catwalk that thrusts into the centre of the audience – but director Ben Crowder has overcome and even capitalised on them with inventive flair.

Playwright Elisabeth Easther has crafted an entertaining and empathetic account of a colourful character from Auckland’s recent history, and in staging it with such entrepreneurial zest, she and her talented collaborators have done her subject proud.

• Famous Flora plays at The White House, 371 Queen Street, Auckland, 6.30pm nightly, until 29 November