Review: ‘Lysistrata Jones’ crosses generations

“Lysistrata Jones” is a musical comedy set mostly in a college campus gym where the basketball team has sunk not baskets, but its own reputation with a 30-year losing streak and a lackluster attitude to match. Along comes the title character, a spunky transfer student determined to change the sad-sack status quo.

For starters, she persuades her fellow cheerleaders not to “give it up” to their basketball player boyfriends (as in giving up sex), as long as the athletes continue to give in so limply to rivals on hardwoods. But in forcing the athletes to battle their way to victory, Lysistrata and her coed conspirators inadvertently force a farcical battle of the sexes into the open.

Manoa Valley Theatre took some risks in choosing “Lysistrata Jones” as its season finale with a run lasting through the end of this month. The play requires the members of the millennial-age cast to wrap their minds around inherently time-warped material.

All that shtick about the battle of the sexes at the plot’s core hearkens to sunny romantic comedies from their grandparents’ era, when battle lines between the sexes were drawn along narrowly defined gender roles. The approach to sex in the play might sound bawdy, but, in fact, it is ancient.

“Lysistrata Jones” is an adaption of Aristophanes’ comedy written in 415 B.C. about Athenian women who withhold sex from their male warriors in hopes of ending the Peloponnesian war.

Oh, how noble! How romantic! How enduring are our human foibles that show up onstage. But the question remains, What can the MVT cast do to put the mark of the millennial mindset on the production?

For starters, they deploy silly physical slapstick to mock their own cool millennial ennui, often exaggerating it. This shines a hilarious but honest spotlight on sexual dilemmas they face as digital natives who have the unprecedented option of hiding behind social media profiles to avoid that messy miasma of sexual awakening.

But how this torments poor Lysistrata, who is played with judicious restraint by Jody Bill Bachler. She remains the most conventional character throughout the play, and she is decent and likable if a bit dizzy when she unwittingly causes heartbreak for her hipper peers.

Or how hip are they? A lot of laughs are triggered by the way several characters appropriate fake identities from the wide buffet of pop culture icons. There is, for example, the ebonics-talking Asian basketball player portrayed by Sean Ramsey. “You don’t come from the projects. Your parents own the projects,” exclaims his fed-up girlfriend played by the delightfully sassy but sweet Anette Arinix.

So it goes. The characters have collisions that crack their trendy masks, and real chemistry between couples finally begins to seep out. The song-and-dance numbers whip up the eye-candy pandemonium, a testament to disciplined direction by Brad Powell.

When it comes to final game, some of the actors still don’t seem able to summon passion. But this and other weaknesses are forgivable every time the irrepressible Leleaʻa Buffy Kahalepuna-Wong appears; she has the dual roles of Heterai, a one-woman Greek chorus, and a madam. Both coeds and athletes visit her at her whorehouse in desperation — not for sex, but for her earthy admonitions to be for real. And does she ever let them have it, as she commands the stage like a force of nature.

Even Lysistrata can use Heterai’s counsel. Behind all that fuss about winning on the basketball court, Lysistrata has neglected the one person who is out to win her heart. Yes, this revelation might sound as corny as those old Debbie Reynolds romantic comedies, but as this production proves, some things don’t change even in an eternity. Hopefully, this means that the 2,500 year-old spirit of Aristophanes is out there somewhere smiling over the prospect that today’s millennials still just want to have fun.

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Liza Tuiolosega is a Honolulu freelance writer focusing on the arts and culture.