• Home
  • About
    • Straight Up
    • Jan Herman
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

GREEKS BEARING (BAWDY) GIFTS

October 8, 2004 by cmackie

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.

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit

Filed Under: main

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

Abstract City
AC Institute
ACKER AWARDS New York
All Things Allen Ginsberg
Antiwar.com
arkivmusic.com
Artbook&
Arts & Letters Daily

Befunky
Bellaart
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal

C-SPAN
Noam Chomsky
Consortium News
Cost of War
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
Cultural Daily

The Daily Howler
Dark Roasted Blend
DCReport
Deep L
Democracy Now!

Tim Ellis: Comedy
Eschaton

Film Threat
Robert Fisk
Flixnosh (David Elliott’s movie menu)
Fluxlist Europe

Good Reads
The Guardian
GUERNICA: A Magazine of Art & Politics

Herman (Literary) Archive, Northwestern Univ. Library
The Huffington Post

Inter Press Service News Agency
The Intercept
Internet Archive (WayBackMachine)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Doug Ireland
IT: International Times, The Magazine of Resistance

Jacketmagazine
Clive James

Kanopy (stream free movies, via participating library or university)
Henry Kisor
Paul Krugman

Lannan Foundation
Los Angeles Times

Metacritic
Mimeo Mimeo
Moloko Print
Movie Geeks United (MGU)
MGU: The Kubrick Series

National Security Archive
The New York Times
NO!art

Osborne & Conant
The Overgrown Path

Poets House
Political Irony
Poynter

Quanta Magazine

Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
Bill Reed
Rhizome
Rwanda Project

Salon
Senses of Cinema
Seven Stories Press
Slate
Stadtlichter Presse
Studs Terkel
The Synergic Theater

Talking Points Memo (TPM)
TalkLeft
The 3rd Page
Third Mind Books
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
t r u t h o u t

Ubu Web

Vox

The Wall Street Journal
Wikigate
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)
World Catalogue
World Newspapers, Magazines & News Sites

The XD Agency

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit
This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in