Le Sud was first performed in April 2009 and has toured a dozen centres around New Zealand since, to rave reviews.
In a clever "what if" twist, actor Nick Dunbar, of Dunedin, plays the womanising French president of a South Island colonised by France.
Gavin Rutherford plays "North Zealand" prime minister Jim Peterson, who is wrangling a moderate centre-right party and extremists in the Maori Party and the far right.
"It's an out-and-out comedy, a bit of political satire, a bit of North versus South rivalry and looking at the possibility of what the South Island would be like if it was French," Armstrong said yesterday.
The idea for the play came from a radio programme he heard in school in the late 1960s about how the French village of Akaroa was established.
"The tenor of the broadcast was if it weren't for the wonderful British cruiser that went down there to stop the French invasion, we'd all be speaking French, and I just thought that was a lovely idea," Armstrong said.
"Then I thought about writing a play and it would be far better having just the South Island colonised by the French and the North Island being English.
"I was aware of all the inter-island rivalry and then I was thinking about different political systems. [The French] seem to live very well out of the socialist system ... so for me it was good material for satire."
• Le Sud will play in the Queenstown Memorial Hall tonight and tomorrow.
Tickets cost $36 each, from the i-Site Visitor Centre in Queenstown or the Wanaka Festival of Colour website.
