Antiwar Attics

NONE OF THE pleasures of Lysistrata are subtle, but for an hour and a half of non-stop sexual double entendre subtlety is hardly a requirement. When the cast is arch, leering, and working together like a well-greased machine, it comes off; the evening, however, has its rough spots when the coordination of the actors weakens and the play goes limp.

Because Lysistrata was written two thousand years ago by Aristophanes, it seems "bawdy" and "ribald" more than sophomoric and thin. There's nothing except sexual silliness to its plot about a smart Athenian woman, Lysistrata (Judith Listfield) who forms a league between all Greek women to force their husbands--by withholding sex from them--to end the Peloponnesian war. The Dunster production takes Lysistrata a little more lightly than it was intended (Aristophanes wrote it during the Peloponnesian war) but so long as you expect only a pretext for laughs, you won't be gravely disappointed.

The Dunster Lysistrata adds several musical numbers which contribute to its lightweight impression. The music is entertaining, though there is nothing particularly brilliant about any of it. Sometimes the whole production takes on a high-schoolish air, but this usually doesn't last too long. The tone and content of the production sometimes approaches that blend of the cute, the childishly obscene and the genuinely funny that must have been present in '30s House productions with titles like Whore and Piece.

The play gets off to a slow start despite a madrigal-like solemn number about wives swearing to deny their husbands "entrance." At first, it's even difficult to hear some of the lines. But once the basic comic situation of the play is revealed--the male characters walking around with painfully exaggerated erections--things hit their stride. The translation seems to be William Arrowsmith's and usually it works out very well, and every once in a while the actors make it too clear it is a verse translation. And jokes the cast occasionally added--like one Athenian's wife disdainful "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"--hit the spot. When one of the women asks one of the men if it isn't terribly hot outside, he answers, "It's not the heat, it's the tumidity." Not every laugh is as literate as that, but most of them will do.

Even if Lysistrata's plan works and the women of Greece emerge triumphant, and settle things in their own way, there isn't all that much here for a contemporary supporter of women's rights to get enthusiastic about. A large part of the humor, especially of Leslie Wilson's well-played Lampito, is the humor of bitchiness, and many of the characters (with the possible exception of the statesman-like Lysistrata herself) are portrayed as bargain-hunting matrons. They find it just as difficult to lay off sex as the men do, and it can hardly be said that Aristophanes takes a position on the battle of the sexes. But sexism isn't the issue here--the only question is how long you can keep laughing at the oldest joke in the world.