“That’s what she said” jokes may not be very mature, but man, can they be funny. Such is the case with “Lysistrata,” an update by Oklahoma City University alum James Tyra of the ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes.
Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre staged the play over the weekend with the premiere of Tyra’s adaptation.
This revamped “Lysistrata” retains the play’s basic plot and structure but jettisons most of its satire of sexual politics in favor of sex jokes, sex jokes and more sex jokes.
If that reads like a criticism, well, it’s not really. Clocking in at a brisk hour sans the intermission, this “Lysistrata” comes in fast, hard and leaves you fully satisfied. (Offended or disgusted readers might want to just stop here, and definitely want to avoid all stagings of this production in the future.)
Lysistrata (Lydia Mackay) is a Greek woman who has grown tired of the endless warfare between Athens and Sparta, so she devises a plan to put an end to the fighting for good. Gathering all the women from both city-states, she convinces them to withhold sex from their husbands, and to continue to do so until every jot and title is taken care of on the peace treaty.
The proposition is a tough sell, but wouldn’t you know it, there’s a character in drag (William Frederick Steuernagel V) to convince the women that it’s their best course of action. Lots of orgasmic moaning and fantasizing about husbands’ apparatuses ensue.
The men don’t take the news any better when they discover their wives’ machinations, leading to a bevy of enlarged members hilariously and outrageously rendered using some clever under-garment gadgetry.
One might expect something along the lines of “Is that an ionic column beneath your toga, or are you just happy to see me?” OK, so they don’t say that, and most of the verbal innuendo isn’t particularly witty or edgy, but the cast is so committed to the physical comedy, it hardly matters.
Stealing the show often is Brandon Kreider as the scrawny and screechy outlier of the male chorus, and that’s even before his unusual “junk” enters the picture. Dallas-based Mackay also is fantastic as Lysistrata, who keeps both the men and the women wrapped around her little finger for most of the show.
With its short running time, “Lysistrata” doesn’t wear out its bawdy welcome and keeps the laughs coming at a rapid pace. This updated version may totally eliminate everything that is potentially highbrow about its ancient Greek theater origins, but something tells me Aristophanes himself would’ve enjoyed this version’s main thrust.
That’s what she said.
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