The Edinburgh Reporter has been keeping a canny eye on these thespian tyro upstarts who embrace this radical adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy about women on a sex strike during the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta. It is the first production from The Attic Collective, a new Scottish theatre company.
411 BC – After two decades of war – fathers, sons, husbands and brothers are still dying. Sisters, mothers, wives and lovers feel powerless to stop it. The Athenean City Fathers have still not learned from the disastrous rout of their navy at the Battle Of Syracuse, Sicily – 413BC.
Having invented the word hubris – they are condemned to ignore its consequences. They soon learn the consequences of another word they invented – irony. Lysistrata gathers together women from every state, both Athenians and Spartans, to enact her plan. The men will be denied what they desire the most. To continue to get a piece of the action – they need to action Peace. To add insult to coitus-repulsa, the women also occupy the treasury temple.
Full of raucous, bawdy humour, first performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, Lysistrata was an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. Reimagined in a near future, 21st century setting, this adaptation holds the mirror up to show us as being no less divided and no less ridiculous.
War. Sex. Power. A contemporary battle of the sexes.
The productions in the first season are united by the themes of Cash, Capital, Women and War.
Lysistrata will be followed by the world premiere of Jo Clifford’s previously unperformed play War in America in May 2017, and a new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera in September 2017.
