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Lysistrata
Lysistrata, by Aristophanes; directed/adapted Michael Hurst.
My first play in 17 months! Very exciting. And a very good production, even allowing for my giddiness. I have never actually read any other Aristophanes but was first exposed to this in extracts performed by Classics students, and then saw a production, which, I was startled to find out on checking, was also directed by Michael (and in 1992. Eek); I remember that one for a moment of tenderness, although he seems to have more of a view that he'd tilted too much towards the farce side of things in the rest of it.
This version - smart, funny, lyrical and very dynamic. Choreographed by Shona McCullagh, dance sequences are integral to the action, and there are chunks of other works (Sappho etc) in there as well, sung/intoned/recited according to need. One of the actors is in a powered wheelchair; the first time I've seen that on-stage, I think, and it doesn't stop him from being just as involved as all the rest. Fabulous clothes (for the women), a touch of Monty Python for the Spartans, and of course ridiculous amounts of dick jokes, right down to the staging. I liked it a lot. It's not really a feminist polemic - I am unsure how much of the original comedy derived from the idea of women having ideas - but the female characters were all really three-dimensional (and some of the men; one guy substituted character depth for vacuuming the set at half-time in his underwear and army boots). I would like, at some stage, to see a single-sex cast version.
Each act started with a cacophonous clash of sound and bright lights, which reminded me of one of the few bits of Connie Willis' Passage that I really liked.
Anyway. Hopefully less than 17 months until my next one. Seeing as plays from the distant past are coming around again, I will just use this space to hope optimistically for a Dario Fo revival and a production of Jean Bett's Revenge of the Amazons, which was probably the play that made me fall in love with theatre.
My first play in 17 months! Very exciting. And a very good production, even allowing for my giddiness. I have never actually read any other Aristophanes but was first exposed to this in extracts performed by Classics students, and then saw a production, which, I was startled to find out on checking, was also directed by Michael (and in 1992. Eek); I remember that one for a moment of tenderness, although he seems to have more of a view that he'd tilted too much towards the farce side of things in the rest of it.
This version - smart, funny, lyrical and very dynamic. Choreographed by Shona McCullagh, dance sequences are integral to the action, and there are chunks of other works (Sappho etc) in there as well, sung/intoned/recited according to need. One of the actors is in a powered wheelchair; the first time I've seen that on-stage, I think, and it doesn't stop him from being just as involved as all the rest. Fabulous clothes (for the women), a touch of Monty Python for the Spartans, and of course ridiculous amounts of dick jokes, right down to the staging. I liked it a lot. It's not really a feminist polemic - I am unsure how much of the original comedy derived from the idea of women having ideas - but the female characters were all really three-dimensional (and some of the men; one guy substituted character depth for vacuuming the set at half-time in his underwear and army boots). I would like, at some stage, to see a single-sex cast version.
Each act started with a cacophonous clash of sound and bright lights, which reminded me of one of the few bits of Connie Willis' Passage that I really liked.
Anyway. Hopefully less than 17 months until my next one. Seeing as plays from the distant past are coming around again, I will just use this space to hope optimistically for a Dario Fo revival and a production of Jean Bett's Revenge of the Amazons, which was probably the play that made me fall in love with theatre.