''Ladies' Night'' is a play by the

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

writers

Stephen Sinclair Stephen Sinclair is a New Zealand playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the co-author of stage comedy '' Ladies Night''. In 2001, the French version won the Molière Award for stage comedy of the year. Other plays include ''The Bellbird'' a ...

and

Anthony McCarten Anthony McCarten (born 28 April 1961) is a New Zealand writer and filmmaker. He is best known for writing big-budget biopics '' The Theory of Everything'' (2014), '' Darkest Hour'' (2017), '' Bohemian Rhapsody'' (2018), '' The Two Popes'' (2 ...

about a group of unemployed workers who develop a male strip show.

Performances

It was first performed in December 1987 at Auckland's

Mercury Theatre The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also r ...

and is the most commercially successful play in New Zealand's theatre history. It had several national sell-out tours in the UK since 1990 and has been translated into sixteen languages. It continues to play worldwide to popular acclaim. In 2001, the Paris production at the

Théâtre Rive Gauche The Théâtre Rive Gauche () is a theatre in Paris in France located at 6, rue de la Gaîté in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. It is owned by the Edgar Entertainment Society, which also owns the Edgar Café and the Edgar Theatre located at 58 ...

in a French adaptation by Jacques Collard received the

Molière Award The Les Molière is the national theatre award of France and it recognises achievement of French theatre each year. The awards are considered the highest honour for productions and performances. Presided and decided by the ''Association profess ...

for Best Comedy.

Development

The first season was workshopped with the actors for month before opening, with the season rapidly selling out. Actors included Bruce Hopkins, Michael Lawrence, Shane Dawson, Nigel Harbrow, Ross Duncan and Alison Bruce.

''Full Monty'' lawsuit

In 1998, McCarten launched a multimillion-pound lawsuit in California, US, against the producers of the 1997 film ''

The Full Monty ''The Full Monty'' is a 1997 comedy film directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer. The screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy. The film is set ...

'', which has a strikingly similar theme and was the highest-grossing British film at the time. It was dismissed because the film had been made in the United Kingdom. Thus, McCarten and Sinclair filed a £180 million British lawsuit against the producers of ''The Full Monty'' in 1998. They claim that the film blatantly infringed on their play ''Ladies Night'', which toured both Britain and New Zealand. Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair created a website containing their play in response to statements from the producers of ''The Full Monty'' that claimed the two productions were not alike. The underlying rights were attributed to co-producer, Paul Bucknor, and the lawsuit was settled out of court; as part of the agreement, the website containing ''Ladies Night'' was shut down."Hollywood Plagiarism"
Weird Realm Film Reviews. Retrieved 1 October 2007.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ladies Night 1987 plays New Zealand plays