That after two and a half millennia we still produce and flock to the plays of Ancient Greece is a testament both to our undying sense of cultural history and to how compelling these works can still be. Showing how foundational Greek drama is for our theatrical tradition is the fact that the cover of the printed program for Theodora Skipitares' new production of Lysistrata doesn't even bother noting the playwright, Aristophanes. Much as with Hamlet or King Lear, the name of the bard can almost go without saying.
Yes, it's technically an adaptation. But the spirit of Aristophanes is here in full, along with very much of his language.
While we can't know exactly how plays like the bawdy Lysistrata were performed in fifth-century-BC Athens, I feel fairly safe in saying that Aristophanes would have no trouble whatsoever recognizing this La MaMa/Skysaver Production, despite the changes; I'd venture to guess that he'd applaud it, too. In spite of the video addenda, the clever puppetry, and the electro-gospel music (written and performed by Sxip Shirey, whom I know from the band gypsy band Luminescent Orchestrii), this is Aristophanes' famous sex-strike tale played, at heart, fairly straight.
Which means, in the case of this particular play: broad humor, absurdity, and extreme salacity, if not quite outright pornography.
It has a slow start. With a kind of awkward grace, our heroine Lysistrata appears—like many of the characters, a sort of full-frontal puppet. Sick of the endless Peloponnesian War, she has called a meeting of the women of Greece to propose that they withhold sex from their husbands until the men make peace. The pact is sworn; the older women are enlisted to take over the Acropolis and its war treasury; and eventually the men, desperate for sport and sporting giant prosthetic erections, beg for mercy. But not before the women overcome some difficulties, including a group of militant old men and, more seriously, the call of their own sex drives—for Aristophanes' women are just as horny as his men.
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