Culture Clash goes Greek

OTHER than producing masterworks called “The Birds,” what do Aristophanes and Alfred Hitchcock have in common? A certain L.A. actor, if the men of Culture Clash have their way. The satiric trio, currently exploring a masked man’s myth in “Zorro in Hell” at the La Jolla Playhouse, is scheduled to spend the weekend of March 16-18 nesting in the Getty Villa’s indoor auditorium for a revival of “The Birds,” their topically tweaked 1998 adaptation (written with John Glore) of Aristophanes’ 2,400-year-old comedy.

Culture Clash member Richard Montoya promises that the jokes and barbs will be updated to the minute and that no icons are immune, least of all the ones on pedestals in the museum next door: “If we move in a timely fashion, we’ll get a chance to perform it before the statues get sent back to Rome,” he quips, and those who’ve followed the J. Paul Getty Trust’s adventures in the antiquities trade will need no explanation.

Culture Clash aims to populate its return to Aristophanes’ cloud-cuckooland with compatriots from past productions, notably Dakin Matthews, the classical actor who played greed personified in the group’s recent L.A. parable, “Water & Power,” at the Mark Taper Forum.

Also this year, Matthews was a spot-on Alfred Hitchcock, a strange bird indeed, in “Hitchcock Blonde” at South Coast Repertory.

Factor in Matthews’ standing as a classical scholar as well as an actor, writer and director, and Montoya says it’s essential to have him for “The Birds,” even if that means temporarily suspending his right of habeas corpus: “He’s a busy guy, so if we have to kidnap him, we will.”

Admission is free for all shows in the experimental Villa Theater Lab series in the auditorium, although reservations are required.

-- Mike Boehm