It's interesting how in times of crisis, theatre so often looks to the Greeks. In these post-"shock and awe" days, a great rash of Antigones and Iphigenias has broken out. But perhaps the most pointed play on the subject of fighting a long and pointless war is not a tragedy, but a comedy: Aristophanes' sex farce Lysistrata, which tells how the women of Greece stopped their menfolk from endlessly waging pointless wars by going on a sex strike. Their demand was simple and got the men in the place where it hurt most. No peace, no nookie.
On March 3 2003, 59 countries hosted 1,029 readings of Lysistrata to protest against the Bush administration's unilateral war on Iraq. Now, two years into the occupation, Sarah Esdaile's production is timelier still. But although it's staged with an exhilarating dash and swagger, it is no more successful than any other version of this play I've encountered.
While Greek tragedy speaks directly to us down the centuries, the comedies more often than not get lost in translation. That is the case here, in an adaptation by Ranjit Bolt. With its awkward rhyming couplets, the text seems to owe an awful lot to the English pantomime tradition. Its look-at-me sprightliness and constant innuendo delight and irritate in equal measure, and your level of enjoyment will depend entirely on your taste for seeing 3ft rubber phalluses waved about.
Lysistrata strikes me as a play that is always better in theory than in practice, but no one could dispute that here, whatever the limitations of the play and translation, the production is very well conceived. Soutra Gilmour's clever design transforms the ever-versatile Arcola space into an underground car park beneath the Acropolis, where the women - led by Tanya Moodie's clever, composed and calculating Lysistrata - come to plot. Moodie gives a fantastic performance, sparring like a lawyer with the men and holding together the crumbling sisterhood as the women try to creep off for a quick shag.
The supporting cast are very good, too, in an evening that is as rude and raucous as a hen night. And there is something refreshing about its depiction of women as having just as large an appetite for sex as their menfolk.
· Until January 14. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
