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Sexy classic pops up as a breezy musical about babes and basketball

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

Now nearly 2,500 years young, the battle-of-the-sexes comedy of Lysistrata and her chums rarely ceases to seduce audiences.

The latest winning incarnation is “Lysistrata Jones,” a bright and bouncy new musical that bounded into the Walter Kerr Theatre on Wednesday.

Staged last summer in a gym at the Judson Memorial Church downtown, the musical is a breezy diversion that may be too lightweight for long-term Broadway popularity but nevertheless is a charmer in many ways.

“Xanadu” scribe Douglas Carter Beane’s latest raid on the ancient classics expertly delivers plenty of laughs, perky songs, sexy goings-on and a stage smoking with cute young hotties performing it all with ease. There’s even a nice message regarding female empowerment. What’s not to like?

Transporting Aristophanes’ situation to a modern-day university where the basketball team always loses because the guys simply aren’t trying, Beane’s amusing story develops differently than the anti-war original but its conflict remains the same: Lyistrata talks her cheerleader comrades into withholding sex from the slacker team members until they win a game.

Hormones rage as the guys resist the girls’ “sex jihad,” but all is happily resolved after two hours of light entertainment driven by Lewis Flinn’s exuberant score and director-choreographer Dan Knechtges’ swift staging. The rhythmic, catchy music is an upbeat mix of contemporary pop styles that’s somewhat more sophisticated than the “High School Musical” standard.

The show’s saucy dances, loose attitudes and bawdy byplay are too naughty for younger viewers, but “Lysistrata Jones” offers otherwise audiences an agreeably gleeful time. Beane neatly delineates his multi-culti class of college kids and salts their doings with numerous gags. Flinn’s enjoyable tunes propel the action both on and off the basketball court, where Knechtges’ vigorously athletic choreography especially shines.