"...lovely blond-ringleted Catherine Frye"

I missed this review when it came out -- she mentions that Cat and her "husband" were "...among the most intelligible actors in a cast of over two dozen."

* * * * *

Plenty of laughs in Delta's 'Lysistrata'
Special to The Record
By Dianne Runion
Record Staff Writer
Published Friday, October 22, 2004

College theater regulars are used to saucy characters like "Oklahoma's" Ado Annie, who "cain't say no." But in Aristophanes' ancient Greek farce, "Lysistrata," strong women of Athens and Sparta won't say yes. Fed up with 20 years of Peloponnesian war and under the title character's leadership, the women swear an oath to withhold sex until their menfolk negotiate peace.

With "Lysistrata" now playing at Delta College, director Jeff Wentworth reprises a 1990 success. This production is also Wentworth's Delta swan song, as he retires in June.

Wentworth can take great pride in the 100-minute high-energy romp of a classic drama that merges lip-synched pop music, timely subject matter and timeless bawdiness.

I would not take young children or my maiden aunt to this show, but high school kids and adults with an eye and ear for double entendre and sexy shenanigans will love it.

Just 18, Naomi Uvalles plays a curvy, feminine Lysistrata. She's the strong heroine who persuades the women of Athens and the hillbilly Spartans to hole up with the war treasury in the Acropolis and hold out on the men.

Jason Flores plays a goofy Commissioner of Public Safety, Lysistrata's nemesis, wielding a golf-club scepter. Like about half the objects and architecture, it's phallic.

Roughly half the other objects are vessels, including John K. White's cartoonishly vaginal Acropolis portal. Neither symbol is subtle; both are nonoffensively comic.

Renata Bricka designed the splendid costumes. The Athenians wear hot reds and oranges; the Spartans, blues and aquas. The men's kilts grow more or less permanently tilted in a running sight gag.

Douglas Parker's 1964 translation mixes elevated syntax with casual contemporary speech.

Wentworth ratchets up hilarity with musical numbers, often providing ironic comment on the action. A chorus of old women dance a delightful "Producers"-like canes-and-walkers number to "I Am Woman," led by bloomer-flashing Christina Chavez Nelson.

As Kinesias, Lee Silveira makes an unforgettable second-act Elvis-type entrance to "Great Balls of Fire" -- a musical comment on the men's deprived state. His moussed-up, glittery Mohawk typifies Wentworth's superb hair and makeup design.

Silveira has a deliciously mobile face for comedy. He plays opposite lovely blond-ringleted Catherine Frye.

The pair is among the most intelligible actors in a cast of over two dozen. Diction, clarity, projection and too-rapid delivery are the show's consistent -- and only -- problem. The young actors need more hard work on modulating their voices and pacing lines so as not to bury them in laughter or lose wit and meaning.

To the show's credit, laughter ranges from constant ripples to explosive guffaws.

"Lysistrata" bursts with eye candy -- handsome soldiers doing a gladiatorlike chorus line to "One" and the pupil-popping erotic dance of "Peace" by the lithe and sinuous Christina Bayless. Her cream-colored see-through accordion-pleated cape makes her look like a gorgeous, exotic moth to the flame of male lust.

Below the hilarity, "Lysistrata" reminds us of a more contemporary weary war. The laughter provokes anti-war thought while showing that after 25 centuries, the battle of the sexes doesn't change much.