LYSISTRATA
SYNOPSIS
Originally written in 411 BC, Lysistrata is one of those plays rediscovered by succeeding genarations and remade in its image. The play has turned up with the cast in American Civil War uniform, it's seen service as a Scots versus English battle and this version, written in 2003 by Drue RobinsonHagan, attracted world wide publicity in the Lysistrata Project, an international protest of the war in Iraq.
In March 2003 three hundred companies around the world, including a number in Australia, staged simultaneous readings of the play as a form of protest, but this is the first production of the translation... a world premiere!
Of course the central concept of Lysistrata is very funny. Somehow the idea of women vowing to refuse sex until men stop fighting tickles people of all generationsbut there's a serious side too. Here are women daring to exercise power and men, marvelous, perfect men always in control find that they can;t even control themselves.
Politicians, in the shape of the magistrate, have not the faintest idea of how to deal woth the situationand end by, having an each way bet. Things haven;t changed in 20000 years have they? And, less women think they're perfect, there's always the backslider willing to cross the picket line.
Lysistrata has it all.
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PICTURES
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REVIEWS
By Adrian Wintle
Bawdiness is laid on with a trowel in this SOACT production of Lysistrata, a Greek comedy that has tickled the funny bone of theatergoers from 411BC to the present day with its central premise of women withholding sexual favours from their men folk until they lay down their arms and stop fighting.
The effect of this scenario on early Athenian audiences must have been galvanizing and, even today, inured as we are to theatrical experimentation, the play exerts a frankness and lack of subtlety that stamps it as unbridled adult entertainment. It could just be history’s longest surviving feminist play.
The present translation suffuses its rhyming quatrains with sexual description, raising the requirement for lusty and unaffected playing on the part of its large cast and for direction that not only acknowledges the play’s attitude but seeks an over-the-top performance style.
Both these requirements have been met in this production. Diana Nicol’s players rise like a trout to the shenanigans of warring males and females bringing gusto and a sense of fun to fumbling male geriatrics and Athenian maidens alike.
Thursday’s opening performance was marked by plenty of physical activity first as the women marked out their territory, and later as the deprived men sought release from their woes.
Neat work surfaced in the male and female chorus departments as well as individual characterizations with Joanne Burton’s Lysistrata magisterial and imposing, Liz Woods and Brooke Pearce making luminous figures of Calonice and Myrrhine and Jacqueline Smart a resolutely indignant Lampito.
One or two memory lapses did not seriously interfere with a bouncy quality of acting that generally obtained a good measure of this play’s steamy humour. Lysistrata plays tonight at 7pm and next week from Thursday to Saturday