Even before the doors opened, a line of
hopeful spectators snaked around the corner of Fulton Street,
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater on March 3.
They came to make love, not war.
They got comedy, heavy on wiener jokes and wiggling balloon
codpieces, courtesy of an eye-popping cast of lusty celebrity
performers from Broadway and cinema including Mercedes Ruehl,
Kathleen Chalfant, F. Murray Abraham, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin
Bacon. And the audience loved it.
With Ruehl ("Fisher King," "Married to the Mob")
in the title role gleefully flinging out lines like, "Close
your legs and think of Greece," Monday night’s reading of
"Lysistrata," the ancient, innuendo-laden comedy by
Aristophanes in which women refuse to put out until their warring
husbands sign a peace treaty, roused the packed audience to a
standing ovation.
It was the climax to a day of more than 1,000 readings worldwide
meant to protest the Bush administration going to war in Iraq.
Performances like "Footloose" co-star Lori Singer’s
sex-starved plea to Lysistrata for a chance to "air out"
her "wool" – "I just have to spread it out on
the bed and let it rest a while" – meant for a wink-wink
nudge-nudge kind of evening as the actors, who only rehearsed
once, reveled in the Cliffs Notes-meets-Farrelly Brothers adaptation
by director Ellen McLaughlin.
Park Sloper Debbie Schwartz, with daughter Nadia Tykulsker,
15, and friend Hudson Williams-Eynon, 15, said they came for
the anti-war message, not the star-gazing. They weren’t fazed
by the plethora of penis punchlines, either.
"It was great," said Tykulsker, a self-described "hardcore"
peace booster who also went to the Feb. 15 anti-war demonstration
in Manhattan. "It was so funny and really important to show
that the peace movement can laugh as well as send a message."
Schwartz, a museum employee who threw $40 into the Lysistrata
Project donation bucket, said, "For me, it’s so nice to
see this particular movement have so much cultural life to it."
At the souvenir table, volunteer Allison Ronis agreed. "I
chose to do it before I knew the cast," said the full-time
stage manager. "It was like a bonus when I found out that
there would be stars doing it."
"What can we do as actors?" asked Sedgwick, sipping
red wine at the BAM cafe’s post-show party, husband and co-star
Bacon at her elbow.
"People make fun of [actors]. They say we shouldn’t be
political pundits," said Sedgwick, "but this is helping
in the way we know how."
At the pre-show press conference, a more vocal Bacon said
he was inspired to participate after seeing actor-director Tim
Robbins speak at an early anti-war demonstration in Boston.
Abraham, an Oscar winner for 1984’s "Amadeus,"
said he hoped the administration would take a family oriented
approach to the war.
"I’m not against the president, just his policies,"
Abraham told GO Brooklyn. "If they had more invested in
terms of their own family – I’m asking that they think in those
terms. My two brothers are dead in a military cemetery in Texas.
My God. And I think that’s enough. You have to do what you can."
The story of the Lysistrata Project’s conception and birth is
quickly becoming the stuff of theater legend. Two months ago,
actor Kathryn Blume, of Greenpoint, and co-founder Sharron Bower,
conceived the idea to organize an anti-war project for theater
artists and chose a staged reading of "Lysistrata."
One Web site, www.lysistrataproject.com, and many e-mails later,
they had a worldwide phenomenon on their hands, with actors and
non-actors joining in from Cambodia to Iceland.
Blume said that after she and Bower recoup their expenses, proceeds
from the event will go to two humanitarian charities providing
aid to Iraqis: the milk and medicine for Iraqi children program
of Madre and EPIC, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center.
Blume told GO Brooklyn, "’Lysistrata’ captures attention
because sex sells. The play is over 2,000 years old and it’s
still funny and painfully timely. It’s about gender politics,
control of public funds and war – they are all still very much
an issue."
Said Bower, "We are not advocating this strategy [of withholding
sex] – unless your husband’s name is George or Saddam. But it
is about a creative way to end a war, and this is what this situation
calls for."
The BAM event came together in just a few weeks, making it "the
fastest event in the history of BAM," said BAM President
Karen Brooks Hopkins. Funding to defray production costs came
from BAM trustee and mega-developer Bruce Ratner and his family.
In addition to the reading, Brooklyn talent filled the balance
of the program. Pre-show, Lava acrobats, clad in red-and-silver
bodysuits balanced, twisted and leaped through rings. Percussion
group Raining Grace also performed. Clowns and acrobats from
Park Slope’s Cirque Boom circulated in the lobby while musicians
from the International WOW Company, dressed in vintage wear,
sang Depression-era songs. The Amy Kohn Band, led by Park Sloper
Kohn, accompanied the reading.
Even with all this local representation, Cirque Boom’s crafty
clown Anna Banana stole the show. Using a strategically placed
balloon pump, Banana’s on-stage construction of the menfolk’s
air-filled members netted roars from the audience.
Actor-mime Bill Irwin admitted it was hard maneuvering on stage
with five men in pumped up penile harnesses. There was a sudden
and unconscious effort to keep their backsides protected and
balloon shafts from touching when the men donned the strap-ons
midway through the reading.
"It was weird," said Irwin, who appeared in last year’s
sleeper hit, "Igby Goes Down."
"I didn’t want it to touch the music stand," he said.
"It was an illuminating experience."
Additional reporting by Lisa J. Curtis.