Make Love, Not War

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III LONDON

TITLE: LYSISTRATA

AUTHOR: ARISTOPHANES

WHERE: LONDON'S WEST END

THE BOTTOM LINE: A Greek antiwar classic gets a faithfully bawdy rendition and some pointed contemporary context.

AFTER FOUNDING THE ROYAL Shakespeare Company, then succeeding Laurence Olivier as head of the Royal National Theatre, director Peter Hall gave his life a really tricky third act: he vowed to turn a profit staging the classics for the mainstream commercial theater. Not musicals, not sex farces, not topical contemporary screeds, but esteemed texts by dead, white, male and mostly European playwrights, generally rendered in the original period and ethnicity rather than revamped for political correctness.

Hall launched the project with star vehicles: Vanessa Redgrave in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending and Dustin Hoffman in The Merchant of Venice, both of which transferred to Broadway. Now he aims at London only, ranging from the money-harried gloom of Ibsen's The Wild Duck to the haute-bourgeois sexual antics of Tartuffe. In October he returns briefly to the nonprofit R.S.C. with an All's Well That Ends Well starring Sophie Thompson, sister of Oscar winner Emma. His best evidence yet that a classic can prevail on the basis of the text itself is Lysistrata. The ancient Greek comedy sold so well at London's Old Vic that it transferred in late August for an extended commercial run.

The title role is played by Geraldine James, who starred in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown and onstage as Portia to Hoffman's Shylock. But most of the time she and the rest of the cast wear masks, as the Greeks would have done. This helps ensure that the real star of the play is the play, which may be the most cunning blend ever of high moral purpose and low humor. Its premise is that war-weary women of Greece convene and vow to give up sex until their men give up battle. That is no small sacrifice: the women are just as lusty as the men, and their triumph is of will over self, not of puritanical virtue over vice.

The language is explicit, the staging more so -- the costumes display bulging breasts and buttocks and inflatable dildos, all apparently in keeping with the bawdry of the original style. In a further attempt to evoke antique comedy, or at least its descendants in vaudeville and burlesque, Hall interpolates music, dance and choral antics. The most modern moment has James remove her mask to confront the audience about global tolerance of violence. Translator Ranjit Bolt, who also worked with Hall in Tartuffe, displays equal sensitivity to Aristophanes' world and to contemporary parallels in, say, Bosnia.

The sense of immediacy begins before the first word is spoken: the set suggests a much bombed city, its walls daubed with hate slogans. The women are identified chiefly by ethnic origin, and their delegate conclave thus calls to mind a peace conference, both for its noble intent and for the frequent ignoble assertions of personal privilege over public necessity. The most striking relevance comes at the end. In the midst of jubilation, the women acknowledge that the peace will be fleeting while the impulse to war is eternal. Aristophanes would recognize his world in this production. We chillingly recognize ours.