When it comes topissed-off married chicks, there is more fury in the blushing, hatchet-wielding ladies of Big Love than in a whole season of Bridezillas.
Borrowing the basic structure of The Suppliants by the
ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, Charles Mee’s Big Love looks
at love and animosity in many forms. And thanks to
convergence-continuum’s lusty production, the play delivers a memorable
smackdown, ending in carnage and, oddly, hope.
It starts with a woman in a bridal gown swimming desperately to
shore (a nice use of con-con’s ever-present video screen), one of 50
sisters who have been married off against their will to 50 male
cousins. The ranks of this sisterhood are represented onstage by
sensible Lydia (Liz Conway), hot-headed, man-hating Thyona (Lauren B.
Smith) and passive, princess-y Olympia (Laurel Johnson).
They wind up at the seaside Italian estate of Piero (an elegant but
accent-challenged Bobby Williams), a wealthy man who deigns to take in
the women for a night. But when the jilted fiancés —
stubborn Constantine (Geoffrey Hoffman), tender-hearted Nikos (Scott
Gorbach) and frat-boy follower Oed (Stuart Hoffman) — arrive via
helicopters, things get a bit testy. After an attempt at
compromise breaks down, the women decide they will go through with the
group marriage, then kill their husbands on the wedding night. Hey,
it’s all downhill after the reception anyhow.
Under the spirited and muscular direction of Clyde Simon, Big
Love blends moments of quiet reflection with burlesque and juicy,
behind-the-scrim bloodletting. Each of the brothers and sisters etches
a distinctive character, and two of them emerge from the horror with
their bodies and affections for each other intact. As Bella, Lucy
Bredeson-Smith navigates her intricate monologues with sublime
control.
There are a couple of missteps. A visiting older couple should be
more erotically entangled with each other. And Piero’s gay son
Giuliano, played by adorable Tony Thai, suffers from a largely atonal
rending of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” But Big
Love is larger than life, in so many ways, that it never fails to
entertain and enthrall.
This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2009.
