GYT go all the way to give 2,500-year-old-comedy new legs

'Lysistrata', a 2,500-year-old comedy about sexual sparring is given sprightly, youthful legs in 'This Means War', Max Hafler's rejuvenation of Aristophanes's bawdy anti-war polemic. Parented by the union of Galway Youth Theatre, Gombeens Theatre Troupe and Cúirt 2008, it is a cheeky and hyperactive offspring but one that is generally likeable.

First performed in BC 421 for a fertility festival in Athens, the original celebrates the fact that sexual activity can be the antithesis of death. Aristophanes uses this in his condemnation of the lengthy, deadly Peloponnesian wars. In Hafler's version, Nicole (Nessa Walsh) persuades the good women of Minopolis to deny their partners sexual favour until they withdraw from armed conflict. Thence commences another battle: one of abstinence versus indulgence until the desire for carnal frolics overpowers the lust to kill.

It is an interesting and challenging task for a group of such young actors and so, for them, Hafler has sanitised the more sexually explicit elements present in the original. Although this understandable castration has left a rather ponderous text, he has enjoyed updating the political and social context: aided by an engagingly eccentric Earnest (a very convincing Eoin Butler Thornton) the duplicitous and manipulative Blairish Prime Minister (Conor Geoghegan) wheels and deals in the plutocratic manner of our European governors, and the women wield an interbred language of dominatrices and 'Desperate Housewives'.

Co-directors Jonathan Gunning and Miquel Barceló, both possessing pedigrees in physical comedy, have helped engender what is a committed and spirited ensemble piece. Whilst transitions between scenes are awkward at times and the 'Cabinet' gag is overplayed, their use of the Nuns Island Studio space, choreography, and even the division of the audience members by gender, makes for an enjoyable evening. More interesting though, is the Brechtian 'Chorus' woven throughout: anthems and chants of choral accuracy, power and panache that drive the work forward.

Unfair as it is to elevate particular thespians from such a democracy of performers, it is the triumvirate of Eoghan Cleary, Bernard Higgins and Eddie Mullarkey in various routines that comes out on top. More importantly, though, 'This Means War' is another example of Galway Youth Theatre's missionary zeal to relate to difficult and different theatre texts and consummate this liaison in a variety of fascinatingly unconventional positions.

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