Playwrights Stephen Sinclair, Anthony McCarten Similar Superhero, A Family Affair, The Caretaker, Les Fourberies de Scapin | ||
Ladies' Night is a play by the New Zealand writers Stephen Sinclair and Anthony McCarten about a group of unemployed workers who develop a male strip show.
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Performances
It was first performed in December 1987 at Auckland's Mercury Theatre 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, in a French adaptation by Jacques Collard, received the Molière Award 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, 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 England. Their attorney was quoted as saying "I've been doing this for 40 years, and this is as solid a copyright case as I've ever seen."