Lin Anderson at the Iconoclast amuses with ARISTOPHANES? GESUNDHEIT! -- More Inanity From The Anti-War Crowd....:
March 02, 2003: A small-college theater professor of my acquaintance (the college is small; he has a little height on him) is busily spending this weekend preparing his emotion-charged charges for Monday's big worldwide, super-semi-simultaneous performance of Aristophanes' classic opus, Lysistrata.More by following the link.
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This Athenian outpouring is being coordinated by the "Lysistrata Project," which advertises that more than 900 readings of Aristophanes' ancient play will be conducted on Monday by theater groups around the world. While this sounds like a lot, I'm guessing it's about the same number of regional theater productions of The Fantasticks scheduled for the same date, and most likely well under the pace set by Monday's backwater stagings of You're A Good Man Charlie Brown.
Oh, and in case you didn't know, the point of the exercise is naturally to protest the war in Iraq -- even though there isn't exactly a war in Iraq yet. You'd think these people could at least wait until the thing gets started to decide if it's worth protesting or not.
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As the story of Lysistrata unfolds, hostilities have been going on way too long to please the women's collective and so to, um, mount a protest against the conflict, this distaff gaggle of Greeks declare a moratorium on playing "Hide the Piroski" until the battle at last comes to its blessed end.
As far as Greek comedies go, Lysistrata is actually pretty entertaining in that special way that anything involving sex can be. It is certainly more entertaining than Aristophanes' other efforts, which include "The Clouds," "The Birds" and "The Frogs" -- all of which are unleavened by any saucy talk at all about erections.
Aristophanes is, however, the perfect author for women of the Left for whom concern about animals, the environment, and the extremely-careful doling-out of woo-hoo are pretty much all in a day's work.
