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Lackluster `Lysistrata'

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 19890309
Author:Joe Brown

Source Theatre has resurrected Aristophanes' "Lysistrata," which predated the "make love not war" catch phrase by more than 2,000 years. But this production, crudely handled by director Jayme Koszyn, plays it strictly for lewd laffs and misses the work's compact logic (and true comedy) by a mile.

Aristophanes wrote his farce with serious intent: In 411 B.C., when the play was originally produced, Athens was in danger of being torn apart in the Peloponnesian War, and the playwright urged a Panhellenic peace, even (comically) providing an ingeniously simple solution. Led by the Athenian ...

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