If there’s an ideology in “Lysistrata,” the antiwar play by Aristophanes, it’s the idea that a
comedy 2,400 years old can still make us laugh — even when the double entendres and smutty
jokes are delivered in Greek to an English-speaking audience of contemporary New Yorkers who
not so long ago had Rudy Giuliani as mayor.
If Giuliani were still in office, there’s no telling what he might have done to ban a
theatrical cast of horny women from making risqué references to thick cocks and leather
dildoes, and hornier men from making anguished, comical displays of their monumental
hard-ons. But judging from the reception the other night at City Center, where “Lysistrata”
is being performed by the National Theatre of Greece
(through Sunday), our censorious former mayor would have found it impossible to convince the
audience that the production was anything other than classy, pleasurable, vibrant and, yes,
timeless entertainment.
As staged by director Kostas Tsianos (who also translated the ancient Greek text), this
“Lysistrata” had the flavor of a rollicking, tuneful musical comedy. Both ethnic and authentic, it’s
by far the best production of the play that I’ve ever seen. With the help of engaging music,
colorful costumes, and especially striking choreography, Tsianos transforms the Greek chorus
from its usual role of reflective, collective commentator into a vivid, earthy, individualized
carnival of peasant soldiers and housewives. Their seamlessly woven songs and dances have an
effortless, genuine quality.
In a director’s note, Tsianos writes about the Dionysian rites, fertility ceremonies and
improvised phallic songs from which Aristophanes’s play originated. The production itself turns
out to be a successful echo, however distant, of those origins.
Lydia Koniordou, as Lysistrata,
is the show’s galvanizing force. She persuades the women of Greece to end the Peloponnesian
war, which has been going on for 20 years, by 1) refusing to have sex with the men until they quit
fighting and 2) taking possession of the Acropolis, where the State Treasury keeps the money for
financing the war.
Her strategy is nothing like a hippie-dippie, make-love-not-war plan, as so
many productions played it during the Vietnam era, but rather a straightforward
fuck-for-peace plan. My guess is that Giuliani would object to that, too.
Performances of “Lysistrata” (with English supertitles) at City Center in Manhattan (131
W. 55th St.) are Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; and Sunday, p.m. Tickets — $35 to
$75 — may be ordered by phone via CityTix, (212) 581-1212, or online at www.citycenter.org.
