Quote - has anyone done this before?

I did one similar, with A4 lying on the ground rather than on a pedestal, but I guess the principle is the same. I just used the HiResTableCloth (in Poser 8 primitives). I used the render for my recent gallery image Ephialtes, so you can see if it's similar to what you are attempting.

This was a first experiment in dynamic cloth for me, and I found the simulation quite easy to set up. To begin with, I just accepted the default cloth dynamics properties. I set the cloth to collide with A4 Body, obviously, and with the GROUND plane. I also set cloth self-collision on, so the folds would not intersect, and Object vertex against cloth polygon, as there were some fairly tight curves for the cloth to drape over (e.g. nipples).

Poser crashing is clear, but can you explain what you mean by "it just won't work". What goes wrong, when it doesn't crash?

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)