In New York they bomb buildings…

In Baghdad they bomb mosques…

WAR!

TOO MANY WARS
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OVERVIEW

LYSSI, which is based on Aristophanes’s classic play, Lysistrata,  is an anti-war circus opera bouffe stage show, which tells how the women of ancient Greece withdrew from all sexual activities until the men of Athens agreed to stop their lengthy war with Sparta.

The concept is as valid today as it was then.

This unashamedly double entendre and anachronistic piece retells the story for audiences of the third millennium by the use of many seamlessly interwoven dramatic disciplines. 

LYSSI is a highly visual Anglo / Franco co-production carefully designed to be understood readily by audiences in both countries simultaneously…

THUMBNAIL

405 BC… The Athenians are fighting an apparently endless war against the Spartans. But the principal character, LYSSI, who is becoming estranged from her Warrior husband as a result of it, comes up with a plan for putting an end to the hostilities… When the Men are back home on leave, the Women of both sides must deny them any sexual pleasures until peace is agreed once and for all.

In addition to LYSSI and her man, the storyline follows three other couples;

DIONNE is desperate for her TIMON to return home so they can wed, however, for the time being, his focus is on becoming a hero – MYRTLE (with punk hairdo and all) is the ‘wild card’ whose appetite for sex might at any time permit the ever horny MELVIN to have his way with her and therefore destroy the Women’s campaign – and HASSEL and HECTOR are the bickering older couple, who have ‘been there’, ‘done that’ and ‘bought the T-shirt’. 

And there is the gamine-like VICTOIRE – she is saucy and a born jester. Her natural interplay with the audience will ensure that everyone is aware of what is happening in the plot regardless of language.

In the end LYSSI and the others, who have had to outmanoeuvre the Men throughout the piece, eventually win the ‘battle of the sexes’ and in so doing set an example for all Women of the future.

(A scene by scene synopsis can be found in the booklet accompanying the CD. And a fully detailed script is also available.)

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Ultimately LYSSI is an entertainment with what deeper thoughts it has to convey summed up by the increasingly disillusioned young warrior, Timon; 

Could it be we have been misled?
Are there fresh paths for every man to tread
A handprint in the earth…
Gently making love
for tomorrow’s world  –
a woman giving birth…
Surely there is more to life than death?