American Stage's Lysistrata doesn't really work, but it's an admirable attempt, nevertheless, to find the up-to-the-minute significance of an uncooperative 2500-year-old comedy. Working with an ambitious adaptation by Todd Olson and T. Scott Wooten, six topnotch actors do everything humanly possible to make Aristophanes' one-trick pony jump through a hundred variously-shaped hoops of fire, and if they occasionally succeed, that itself is reason for unbounded congratulations. I should say here that I've never seen a satisfying production of Lysistrata — a textually faithful one at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center several years ago quickly got bogged down in stupid sex jokes, and I've even watched a Greek video version (English dubbed in) that was so boring, I wanted to scream in Greek "Hit the stop button!" The problem is, the play has a premise so magnificent, producers seem not to notice that it has little else besides.
That premise is: What if the women of Athens and Troy were to refuse sex with their husbands until their husbands stopped making war on each other? Brilliant, right? But after establishing this fine idea, Aristophanes does next to nothing: there's virtually no plot, certainly no character development, not much besides jokes about erections and horniness that just don't matter much to an audience over the age of 16. Fortunately, adapters Olson and Wooten seem to recognize this problem, and their solution is a promising one: They start the play in ancient Greece, then move us to the Crusades, the War of 1812, the Cold War, Vietnam, and finally Iraq. The subtext, then, is that all wars are unnecessary (but what about the Civil War? The war against Hitler?), and that women have always been powerful enough to step in and call a halt. If the production finally fails, it's because Olson and Wooten didn't depart from the original enough: hundreds of years may pass like jet planes, but Aristophanes' thinking in this play trudges on like a slug. It's amazing that it moves at all.
But in this version, it does. The play opens like a tragedy, with Julie Rowe as Lysistrata wearing a mask and speaking portentously about war deaths and the need to reduce them. In some ways, this is the best moment in the whole play: Rowe's lines have real dignity, and you're reminded that good Greek tragedy is among the most fascinating, complex and moving theater ever written. But soon the tone of the play turns from somber to silly, and we're off on our comic journey. Lysistrata calls one woman and one transvestite to put her plan into action ("Don't you believe peace should come before we do?"), and before you know it, the three plotters are swearing by their underwear to refuse their husbands and lovers. There's a bit of a subplot — other women, we hear, have taken over the Acropolis, where all the funds for war are stashed — and then we're off to the Crusades, where a General declares (à la Bush) that "We're fighting the Spartans abroad so we don't have to fight them at home." Then to the War of 1812, during which Lysistrata sings and plays banjo, and next to the Cold War, where the very funny Steven Clark Pachosa skulks around in a trench coat and we hear of the president's retreat, Camp Daedalus. The wildly energetic Drew DeCaro shines in several parts, from cross-dresser to general, and talented newcomer Samantha McKinnon Brown does her best to entertain us in the overlong tale of a wife who takes forever to have sex with her famished husband. Two other actors — Jon Genneri and Francine Wolf — turn in solid performances. Still, at the end of the evening it's Pachosa and Rowe whom you most remember: the former for almost salvaging the show through the sheer force of his will, and the latter for making Lysistrata a charismatic and utterly sensible heroine. Olson directs intelligently, and Scott Cooper's set, featuring modern versions of classic columns, makes a useful if not very attractive environment. Bill Brewer's costumes, from ancient tunics to modern bra and panties, are crucial to our understanding of the shifting action.
Is it enough? Not quite. But you've got to hand it to Olson and Wooten. They almost did the impossible. They almost made Lysistrata stageworthy.
Now let's see Greek drama that does work: say, Rowe and Pachosa and DeCaro in The Oresteia. I bet they'd be stunning.
And there's not a stupid sex joke anywhere to be found.
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2009.