BWW Reviews: LYSISTRATA at Connecticut Repertory Theatre

Outrageous, bawdy, and pointed: LYSISTRATA may be one of the oldest comedies we have (written in 411 B.C.E. by the great Greek troublemaker Aristophanes) but it remains both wickedly funny and pertinent. He wrote it 20 years into a bloody war that seemed endless. His premise? Have women conspire to withhold sex from their men until they can't take it any more and agree to a peace treaty.

Director and choreographer Jen Wineman, who trained at Yale School of Drama, has created a new adaptation based on her reading of six English translations of the original, and set the piece in the 1940's. She's retained the plot, and both the old women's and old men's choruses, but trimmed the whole thing down so that it runs just under 90 minutes with no intermission.

This LYSISTRATA is no museum piece. It's playful and eclectic in style: there's a lot of Commedia dell'Arte caricature in the old folks choruses, there's a burlesque number, there's a slow motion dance piece to strains of the Carmina Burana, there's audience participation on one song. Candy colored lights play across a great set. The façade of a bank is emblazoned with an over-sized Uncle Sam, offering upstairs windows and little grocery and hardware stalls down below. The Greek columns that form the front of the bank are set into a plaza which has images of a pinup girl and a World War 2 era bomber splashed across the flagstones.

In Aristophanes' time, all the roles would have been played by men, wearing ridiculously padded costumes for the women's parts, and exaggerated phalluses for the male ones. Here, the women are women, dolled up in an array of 40's tropes. Lysistrata is dressed in high-waisted white Hollywood pants, Katherine Hepburn style. There's a Rosie the Riveter dame whose work overall opens to reveal a lacy push up bra. There's a Donna Reed type in pearls and garter belt, who keeps dropping layers as she heats up. Costumer Fiona Shaw-Mumford (a senior BFA candidate in design) has had a ton of fun. She's engineered a terrific final costume for the figure of Peace, who is surrounded by a veritable garden of shamelessly sprouting erections of all shapes, colors, and sizes, sprung loose from their flies, in the final scene.

Runs are short at Connecticut Repertory Theatre, the producing arm of the acting training programs at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. LYSISTRATA ran just 8 shows over two weeks, and closed on March 8. Each production uses a few Equity actors in central roles, and fills out the company with graduate and undergraduate actors as needed. This permits a season of relatively large cast shows, more than a conventional regional theater that hires all Equity talent can afford. Design is generally top notch, as there are graduate programs in both set and costume design that have sent work to international competitions. Some productions make use of the world-famous puppetry program at UConn, as well.

For this show, the statuesque Equity actor Lisa Birnbaum carried the title role with boldness and energy. She was matched by the comparatively diminutive and highly skilled Blake Segal, also Equity, in the role of the Police Commissioner. He offered a master class in how to deliver a long monologue with cleverness, pace, and a huge vocabulary of gestures placed precisely to punctuate the rhythm of the speech. The rest of the company, all students, played full out and clearly had the chops to take advantage of the expert coaching they'd received.

Next up at the CRT, running from March 26 to April 4, is a new piece by the Split Knuckle Theater Company, titled BAND OF THE BLACK HAND, which promises to incorporate film noir, Indonesian shadow puppetry, and jazz. If this sounds like an unlikely mashup, know that Split Knuckle's last piece, ENDURANCE, managed to weave together Shackleton's Antarctic journals with the 2008 decline of the insurance industry in Hartford, creating a fascinating and physical meditation on what it means to lead. Rich both in ideas and in images, it was one of the most invigorating theater events this reviewer has seen in years. So: if you like adventurous theater that showcases imagination and highly trained ensemble performers, I'd recommend the trek to Storrs, CT, which does seem to be rather far from anyplace, despite Connecticut's small size.

Photo credit: Matt Pugliese

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