What: Le Sud
Where and when: Maidment Theatre, February 11-March 6
Historians call it a counterfactual reflection, which is really just a fancy way of saying, "What if?". That's exactly what playwright Dave Armstrong pondered when, aged 10 years old, he sat in Mrs Ritchie's classroom at Brooklyn School in Wellington listening to a radio broadcast about what would have happened
if the French had beaten the British in colonising New Zealand.
"I wondered if we would all be speaking French."
The idea never left Armstrong. Nearly 40 years on it is the subject of Le Sud, his latest and, he believes, funniest play.
First performed at last year's Wanaka Festival of Colour, Le Sud blends political satire and farce to take a comic look at the outcome if the South Island had become an independent, prosperous and French-speaking socialist nation.
In Armstrong's world, the Brits, confined to North Zealand, look enviously across the ditch - Cook Strait, rather than the Tasman Sea - as their neighbours in Zelande du Sud enjoy wine-fuelled long lunches, a 30-hour working week and the exploits of a womanising French Prime Minister, Francois Duvauchelle.
Struggling with the vagaries of a free market economy and constant electricity shortages, the northerners decide that North Zealand PM Jim Peterson, a laconic and conventional bloke, must lead a delegation to persuade their southern friends to get the electricity flowing north.
Sparks fly as Maori, French and English cultures clash and everything New Zealanders hold dear is lovingly sent up.
"My other plays, like Nui Sila and The Tutor, are tragedies dressed up as comedies but this is just funny," says Armstrong. "It's a play for people who want to come to the theatre and have a laugh and are prepared to laugh at each other and themselves. I probably manage to offend everybody but it's done with real heart."
So what if the French had successfully colonised the South Island back in 1840? Had the French claimed the South Island, George Henare reckons we might talk about high country snail, rather than sheep, and that haute couture would have been a big industry.
"I doubt, though, there would have been a better deal for tangata whenua. We might just have got the Treaty of Wanaka, rather than Waitangi."
Recently honoured with a CNZM for services to theatre, Henare plays wily kaumatua Tama Te Tonga whose range of business pursuits mean he wants the negotiations to work to his satisfaction.
Michael Lawrence might be a self-confessed Francophile who last year performed an entire play in French, but in Le Sud he plays the North Zealand PM. Lawrence suspects we would have markedly different theatre, film and visual arts traditions - not to mention more refined eating habits - had the French colonised the South Island.
"Great films, great theatre and great cuisine: the French like to take their time with eating, rather than just shovelling it down. They are more sophisticated in their degustation."
British ex-pat Andrew Grainger is Zelande du Sud PM Duvauchelle. For his money, Grainger believes French foods, like foie gras, would feature more prominently among New Zealand farming traditions. "And the national rugby team might have done the cancan rather than the haka," he adds, assuming that rugby, rather than petanque or football, was the most popular sport.
Newcomer Gregory Cooper says there would have been more bikes, baguettes and berets, while Jennifer Ward-Lealand, playing the elegant French foreign minister Dominique Le Bons, believes French settlement might not have done much for the South Island's "clean and green" reputation.
"Just look at the state of footpaths in Paris where dogs regularly relieve themselves."
Miriama McDowell, recently returned from Europe, reckons citizens of both nations might feel more connected with the rest of the world.
"I think it would have completely changed our attitudes to the rest of the world. We go on the Big OE to Europe but instead we might be doing language and cultural exchanges between the North and South Islands."
Former University of Canterbury French literature and history professor Dr Peter Tremewan has considered the issue more seriously than most. His book, French Akaroa: an attempt to colonise southern New Zealand, is one of the few scholarly works to closely examine the matter.
Tremewan doubts whether many people are aware of how close the South Island came to being French. Had the French naval ship Aube followed its instructions and sailed straight to Akaroa, rather than stopping at the Bay of Islands in 1840, he says the world created in Le Sud might well have come about.
In 1838, Jean Francois Langlois, captain of the whaling ship Cachalot, persuaded some Banks Peninsula Maori to sign a land deed. Back in France the following year, he obtained government backing to make "Southern New Zealand" a French colony. This was to include Stewart Island and the Chathams, as well as all of the South Island.
Early in 1840, the Comte de Paris set off with nearly 60 settlers to start the colony. A corvette, the Aube, would ensure that French interests were looked after. However, while the two French ships were still on their way, Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson sent a copy of the Treaty of Waitangi to the South Island, obtaining the signatures of a number of leading Maori chiefs, including Iwikau and Tikao who signed at Akaroa on May 30.
This allowed Hobson to declare British sovereignty over the South Island on the grounds of cession by the Maori. Unfortunately for the French, the Aube decided to call at the Bay of Islands before going to the South Island. This meant that they met Hobson and discussed sovereignty.
The French could not declare the South Island as their colony without confronting the British who had military reinforcements close by in Australia.
However, the French set up a naval station at Akaroa that lasted six years and nearly all of the settlers stayed on, creating a little bit of France Downunder. Plans for systematic emigration were abandoned.
"If the French had gone direct to Akaroa, instead of calling at the Bay of Islands, and especially if they had arrived in May 1840, rather than July, the British would have had quite a job dislodging them," says Tremewan.
"There were few Maori in the South Island at the time and no significant British settlements - Christchurch, Dunedin and Nelson came later - so for a short time Akaroa was the biggest European settlement there.
"The look of the world would certainly have been different if a few million French settlers had arrived. They were planning a convict settlement in the Chatham Islands, and perhaps some off-shore island could have eventually become the site of their nuclear tests.
"When the New Zealand venture failed, they were forced to take up their second option, the Marquesas Islands and Tahiti, which were much less suited to settlement. But two of the naval captains stationed at Akaroa became governors in Tahiti."
Coincidentally, it was Tremewan's brother, Philip, who commissioned Le Sud for the Wanaka Festival while the Auckland Theatre Company's Literary Unit, along with director Raymond Hawthorne, helped Armstrong with the script's development.
Given the relationship, Tremewan was quick to see the play: "It's a lively play which knowingly uses a lot of stereotypes and that is its strength. It's just very, very funny."
Armstrong used French Akaroa: an attempt to colonise southern New Zealand as one of several references but says most of the ideas came from his own musings. His thoughts developed more quickly when he saw a play by 18th century comic dramatist Moliere, dubbed the French Shakespeare.
"I thought about how different our literary traditions might be and then I started thinking about sport: Sir Richard Hadlee as a petanque player. I liked the idea of writing and making jokes in three languages - English, French and Maori - even though I am only fluent in English."
Describing himself as "an equal-opportunity satirist", Armstrong alters the script to make it more relevant for each city Le Sud is performed in. He says Aucklanders should expect lots of Super City jokes and quips about Rodney Hide flying his girlfriend round the world.
