Word: lysistrata
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Peter Arnott's staging of Lysistrata may not be the best university theatre I've seen in four years here. But I honestly can't remember anything better. It puts it all together; a simple, but visually pleasing and extraordinary functional set that, combined with Arnott's precise blocking, makes optimum use not only of the arena but of the entire theatre; a truly superior use of lighting; ingenious tinkering with the script; and acting that ranges from good to superb...
...lines were delivered perhaps a bit more graphically than Aristophanes intended, but that was alright. It made me catch several that I'd somehow missed before. There were several other nice touches besides Harmony, a role filled (and how) by Laurie Campbell--including a calypso chorus to Lysistrata, and a folk-song paean to Athena. the nicest, though, was to give the Spartans ten-gallon Stetsons and Texas accents. It sort of gave you a better idea of what Demosthenes was up against...
...most impressive figure, physically and dramatically, in a Stetson was Lynne Waite as Lampite, Lysistrata's spartan collaborator. She was big and tough, but not so grossly masculine as to make you think her husband would be well rid of her. But the second most disappointing scene of the play (the most being Harmony's appearance clothed) was to be hers; the original script called for her bosom to be bared. Shucks...
...back those golden high-school days of drive-in movies and cramps in the groin. And after the reconciliation, with Myrrhina chasing him, he gives a similarly convincing impression of exhaustion. Judith Wells' Myrrhina is a bit colorless at first, but in the scene where she is commanded by Lysistrata to raise Cinesias to fever pitch and then leave him high and dry, she becomes a genuinely enticing piece, a bit of voluptuous femininity. Unfortunately, Dorothea Chunis as Kalonike and Elin Diamond as a bucolic Theban woman had roles far too small for actresses of their ability; Miss Diamond...
...more than 25 years she played aunt, mother and grandmother to most of filmdom's top stars, won an Oscar as best supporting actress in 1938 for Jezebel, was nominated for three others, appeared in 35 movies all told and in such Broadway hits as 1930's Lysistrata (252 performances) and 1934's Dodsworth (147 performances...