"I loved his willy. I really loved his willy." This is not the sort of audience reaction you expect to hear outside a staging of an ancient Greek play, but the new show at the Arcola Theatre in London is Aristophanes, and Lysistrata, and a Lysistrata far closer in intent to the original than the po-faced American translation (Douglass Parker's) sitting on my shelf in which the introduction proclaims the play is about "Love Achieved".
Of course it is not about love, but sex, and women exercising the power of their bodies to achieve the highest of goals, peace. So the four-foot-long flourescent tubes rising, and rising, and rising, from the groins of the magistrate, the Spartan ambassador and Kinesias are entirely explicit in their meaning, and the actors, and the text, have no problems with that.
To an ancient Greek audience this was ludicrous fooling, but today it has a more serious meaning. The young women in the opening night audience were cheering on Lysistrata (a powerful performance by Tanya Moodie) all of the way, as she dominated the play, and the men - this is girl power for the Naughties, and a far more admirable model than that offered by the Spice Girls in the 1990s.
Ranjit Bolt’s musical adaptation, previously seen at the Old Vic, is a perfect festive season choice, a great antidote to the stress of the festive season. The music (by Simon Slater) is a rollicking mix of music hall and classic Fifties movie, and Ann Yee's dance routines make fine use of the imaginative set - an Athens carpark, with battered-looking vehicles. This is surely the first time a Vauxhall Vestra has doubled as Pan's Grotto. If the small cast - particularly the three men - sometimes struggle to maintain the volume and power of lungs and muscles together, it is only a minor fault.
Article comments
1 - larry
i had the pleasure of seeing
i had the pleasure of seeing a
performance of lysistrata
at the u of az. they started
with black and white films
of 20th century wars.the constant
prescence of athena on stage
was excellent. the phallic
symbols were titan
missiles, common to tucson.
i enjoyed the entire play. play it is a timeless play
2 - Natalie Bennett
Sounds brilliant! As your comment indicates there is a lot you can do with this play - pretty amazing when you think when it was written.