It’s one of the most audacious and head-spinningly ambitious theatrical endeavours ever mounted in New Zealand. Promising to transport us to 1984 and the notoriously hedonistic underground New York clubs (the last hold-outs from the disco era), audiences arrive in Henderson and enter, via a subway station portal, a NYC wonderland. You walk a block-long city street before you even get into the Pleasuredome club. In the opening number, Lucy Lawless makes a grand golden entrance riding a roman chariot and with a burst of flames. The audience are ready and primed for a great night.

No expense is spared – on opening night there is even a mounted NY cop on horseback out the front, patrolling the queue. And there are many opportunities for us to splurge too – on drinks, street vendor hot dogs, and Southern Maid donuts. The venue has capacity for 800 people each night. An entire industry of costumed actors, waitstaff and ushers have popped up in this industrial warehouse. This is a try-out before they go offshore to conquer the world of entertainment.

Unfortunately, for all there is to admire about…..

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Pleasuredome – The Musical is the brainchild of Executive Producer Rob Tapert (producer of Hercules, Xena, Spartacus).  In his 20s Tapert was dragged into a New York City underground club and had one of the best nights of his life: a sensory overload of music, lights, dancing and beautiful people.  He has been trying to recreate that wild night for 40 years.   Mark Beesley wrote Pleasuredome “as a love letter to New York from a skinny white boy at the bottom of the world, drowning in the cultural desert of Mt Roskill in the 70s and 80s.” 

New York in the 1980s was not the clean, law abiding, mostly safe city it is today.  The city had run out of money and couldn’t afford essential services, things like enough police officers and garbage collectors.  Rats, drugs and crime were rampant. The city was broke.  But during this time the arts scene flourished, as did the gay scene. By 1984, when Pleasuredome is set, AIDS is ripping through communities and money hungry tycoons have begun to plan the gentrification of the city.  Greed is becoming the new art. 

Pleasuredome is the story of a nightclub and its crew of hedonistic singers and dancers who will do whatever it takes to stop a rich property investor from buying the club to develop it.  It’s an intoxicating mix of sex, drugs, lust, love, coming out, going back in and coming out again, greed, rebirth and music.  Lucy Lawless is Sappho the middle aged coked-up diva and star of the Pleasuredome.  Her star shone bright some time ago, but after years of partying her star has started to fade.  

Pleasuredome is staged in an industrial area of Avondale.  The audience is immersed into 1980s New York City from the moment you walk through the doors of the subway and into a city street complete with hot dog stands, graffiti, a bar and hookers.  The show brings together the creative energies of practitioners at the top of their game from the music, television, film and theatre world.  New Zealand has so many people working in the film industry and it is so exciting to see those skills being tapped into.  

The Pleasuredome club itself is at the end of the street and once again the set design for the show itself is ingenious.  Audiences can either stand, sit, or those with a bit more cash can book tables with table service throughout the show.  The stage is designed in an X shape so wherever you sit you are close to the action. 

The story of Pleasuredome is very Broadway.  There is singing, dancing, boys and girls meeting each other, falling in love, a climax and a resolution.  It’s hard for a musical to touch you and I wasn’t moved by it on an emotional level.  But perhaps that is a part of the genre of ‘the musical’.  There are struggles … but then there is music and dance and that has the power to overcome.  “Dancing gives us strength, it gives us hope and gets us laid.” 

Lawless gives a wonderfully believable layered performance of the faded Sappho.  Her rendition of The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is the highlight of the show for me and the use of video is powerful.  Vince Harder is the perfect bad ass drug dealing pimp and his musical performance is faultless, as is Sole Mio’s Moses Mackay.  Because Pleasuredome is staged in an enormous industrial venue the sound can be patchy at times.  The actors are not all professional singers and this becomes apparent during some of the vocal renditions, although it’s not helped by the sound. 

Barbara Darragh has designed some truly flamboyant and wonderful costumes for the show.  One particular set of costumes is outrageously fun and quite disconcerting.  I won’t spoil it by going into too much detail.  Hair was big in the 1980s and Stefan Knight’s hair and makeup work is divine.

Pleasuredome is a courageous extravaganza of a show that is hugely enjoyable.  It’s a treat to see such risk taking putting on a show of this scale.  So, dig out your leg warmers and arrive early for some trashy glam NYC 80s street life.  You’ll have a ball.
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Pleasuredome – the Musical is huge: huge space, huge hair, huge show. It’s fun, entertaining – and a hot mess. The production values are uneven but put up with the ridiculous to enjoy the sublime.

There’s an immediate wow factor: via a graffitied subway, you emerge on a grungy rain-slicked sidewalk. It’s like Auckland Museum’s much-lamented Centennial Street got an early 1980s New York makeover, complete with porn cinema, hot dogs and a working bar.

It’s utterly immersive and very impressive. [More] 

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