Turning the Spartan Lampito (Laura Elphinstone) into a tough northern lass in designer tracksuit, Myrrhina (Leandra Lawrence) into a flustered yummy mummy, with her bag spilling baby accoutrements, and Kolonike (Rosanna Lavelle) into a over-scultped and underemployed West London trophy wife might be said to be relying to stereotypes, but they play up to these with such glorious abandon that criticism seems mean-spirited.
The magistrate (Jason Morell) is your sleazy local estate agent showing off his latest-model mobile camera, and in their role as singing and dancing Athenian soldiers, Josephn Attenborough and Pete McCamley do a fine job of quaking and covering as the women constrain them within a maypole twist of tights, then use Aphrodite's weapon of lipstick to reduce them to quivering wrecks.
Singing with multi-coloured dildos for microphones, sacrificing to Aphrodite by pouring wine into a baby's potty then solemnly sharing the draft, and of course those "willies" are just some of the images that are likely to stick in your mind from this production. Just be sure they don't become too strongly entrenched, or you might find yourself laughing inappropriately at an intimate moment.
The theatre's details and online booking is here. The show continues until 14 January.
Find more London theatre and gallery reviews on My London Your London.
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.