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Withholding assets
Lysistrata's characters hold
back, though the actors don't |
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by DAVE SURRATT
ON STAGE THIS MONTH at the Onyx Theatre production of
Aristophanes' Lysistrata: long hair and hunger. Both are a
welcome sight, and both are the property of John Beane and Sean
Critchfield, creative core of the Insurgo Theater Movement, a
6-year-old, Southern California-based ensemble dedicated to presenting
the works of "international, classic and avant-garde authors," while
"maintaining a rigorous exploration of [their] own independent
theatrical form."
These are just words, of course. Talk is cheap, and mission statements
found in community theater program notes are buy-one-get-five-free.
Whatever ITM has done with this Las Vegas premiere, imperfect as it is,
still reaches past the rhetoric to throttle and tickle an audience and,
although that's hard to price, the experience is at least worth
Lysistrata's $20 ticket. Plus, you get to enter the Onyx Theatre
through The Rack underwear/bondage shop, then see much of that gear put
to deft use.
About the long hair: It's not that Beane's and Critchfield's man-tresses
are such a radical thing to behold in this era or work environment. It's
more of a symbolic, freak-flag thing, man, and it's intimately related
to the hunger for betterment of a quickly evolving Vegas theatre status
quo. That hunger is always the real engine behind good local
productions. No one with a full belly bothers to, as director Beane has
done, slice up a classical Greek comedy, paring away more than half the
original text to make room for spicy modern updates unfit for digestion
by a deep-pocketed play-goer contingent of Summerlin septuagenarians and
middle-agers in khakis and lemon V-necks for whom the thought, "I'm
watching a play!" is filling enough.
There's another hunger here, displayed by the men in this play toward
the women. In "a kind of Athens," Lysistrata (Cynthia Vodovoz)
convinces the wives of Peloponnesian War soldiers to withhold sex from
their husbands until peace is secured. That part is all Aristophanes,
but the incorporation of music by Modern English, Nina Simone and Lou
Reed -- along with heavy infusions of 21st-century slang -- is all Beane.
If it sounds silly, it is. How can it not be silly when the Chorus (one
actor, Johnny Miles, clad in a wife-beater, suspenders and fedora)
defuses a scene of imminent rape by snapping into a heavily stylized "I
Melt With You" cover played by a live keys/bass/drums trio? It's silly,
sure, but it follows logically, it's done confidently, it plays by this
production's own rules and it works.
Vodovoz looks great, but runs into trouble with lackluster singing and
acting (at least she did on opening night), which is too bad,
particularly for a titular character. Lysistrata's motivation
remains shadowy, and it's way too hard to see her as the spearhead of
such a gutsy boycott. Some of Aristophanes' thematic urgency with
respect to women and their place in a warring society is diluted as a
result, and this is the play's biggest problem. That it doesn't
completely scuttle the production is testament to strengths found
elsewhere.
Brandon McClanahan's dual role as Harry and Magistrate goes a long way
in proving he was victimized by bad direction in last February's Las
Vegas Little Theatre production of The Runner Stumbles. As Kalonike,
Katrina Larsen -- surprise, surprise -- again performs like a woman
hypnotized into believing she really is that character onstage. Why she
wasn't cast as Lysistrata is a mystery, but at least she's
here, even if her underuse in local productions is getting downright
irritating.
Most exciting of all is the General, played by hungry long-hair
Critchfield himself. The General's onslaught of surreal, homoerotic
invective screamed in the faces of terrified recruits isn't just a good
laugh, it's a good laugh that goes on for several minutes. Pair that
with the genuine, on-edge vibe that descends whenever the berserk
bastard enters a scene, and you have a real character, an anchor without
whom this production would flap in the breeze, as unhinged as these
soldiers become after being denied the "right" to their wives' bodies.
Lysistrata
Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.
Through May 27
Onyx Theatre (inside The Rack)
953 E. Sahara Ave.
732-7225
$20; $15 for seniors, students and military |
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