TimesArgus.com - We Are Vermont

One-woman comedy pillories global warming

BURLINGTON – "The Boycott" is a one-woman campaign against global warming. Vermont Stage Company actor Kathryn Blume has taken the classic 2000-plus-year-old Aristophanes comedy, "Lysistrata," and brought it to today with hilarious – and often poignant – results.

Presented on Tuesday, local audiences have one more chance to see this politically savvy political comedy and work-in-progress on Sunday evening at the Flynn Center's FlynnSpace.

"The Boycott," a one-woman show, written and performed by Blume and directed by Jason Jacobs, is a point-blank attack on current American policy on global warming – and it's terribly funny, and largely convincing.

What makes it funny is the incorporation of the Aristophanes comedy in which the women withhold sex until the men cease warring. What worked then should work now.

In the show, Blume fantasizes a big Hollywood movie in which the first lady of the United States, Lyssa Stratton, attempts to combat global warming by launching a world-wide sex strike in a thinly veiled attack on the current administration. Finally convinced by her daughter that global warming is real and natural disaster imminent, Lyssa announces the campaign to withhold sex – and she is laughed at.

So, with the help of her secret service agent – who hopes to marry Lyssa's daughter – Lyssa coerces her husband's sexy public relations expert, also mistress, to help. Together, with the help of a frog from the Brazilian Rain Forest, and after a series of very funny – often bawdy – misadventures, they convince the president.

The "Lysistrata" story is told in tandem with the real Kathryn Blume discussing her desire to make a difference. The two stories go back-and-forth nearly seamlessly.

There are two weaknesses in the writing, but neither of them kills the humor or effectiveness of this delightful comedy. First, it is too long, running more than 90 minutes without intermission, which is made apparent by the second weakness. At times, the preaching – reciting facts and lecturing – proves to be too overbearing to be effective. Particularly, the last episode of lecturing, the only prolonged instance, almost stops the show dead in its track. Most of the information is well-known to the audience, or has been given more subtly in the play before. Fortunately, it picks up right after for a witty and charming finale.

Much of the success of this show is due to Blume's expert acting. Although there is a bit too much earnestness at the beginning to seem real – this is where Blume is playing Blume – she creates delightful characters and moves seemingly effortlessly between them. In short, she is delightful.

Blume has created a hilarious and apt comedy that, with some minor pruning, should become a piece of excellent theater.

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