Orange County Premiere!

Big Love
by Charles L. Mee
Directed by Jocelyn A. Brown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THEATER REVIEW

Big fat Greek wedding meets runaway bride - fasten your seatbelt for an incredible ride down a thorny marriage aisle!
by Anne-Margret Bellavoine, Northern Lights

July 11, 2005

Charles Mee updated an obscure Aeschylus tragedy, The Suppliant Women, and repackaged it into Big Love, an in-your-face 'vaudevillian tragicomedy,' directed with a deft hand by Jocelyn Brown.

In this serious farce, 50 Greek women are condemned by a patriarchal society into preordained marriages to their 50 male cousins, in random order, setting the stage for mayhem and acrid social commentary. The larger-than-life premise is reduced to three feuding/loving modern couples in opposing traditional and feminist roles.

Alex Bueno is riveting as Thyona, the ur-liberated leader, with sweet and soft Olympia (Bonnie Wickeraad) her cloying counterpart, and Lydia (Keri Safran) the reasonable middle ground. Their respective Americanized suitors are macho Constantine (Bill Elverman), gentle Oed (Bryan Barton) and romantic Nikos (Dimas Diaz).

Straddling - nay defying - genres, with a fast and furious pace which never forgets its philosophical punch, Big Love bursts into song, acrobatics, fights and dance, starting with "You don't own me" by the ladies to "Bewitched, bothered and bewildered."

The young women consider themselves refugees, accidentally landing into rich Italian villa owner Piero's garden. Piero (Michael Jablonski) lives with his mama, Bella, (Annie Mezzacappa) and remnants of her assorted brood of delinquents and degenerates, including nephew Giuliano (Ricky Culbertson) who likes to cross-dress and owns a Barbie and Ken collection.

The parallels with current events underline timeless universals of human nature. Wealthy Piero is ambivalent at welcoming a horde of oppressed immigrants, yet he and his mother are eager to promote social justice, which implies unacceptable compromises for either gender camp. Yet nothing is ever clearly one or the other, the black and white extremes emphasized by Irina Kruzhilina' stunning costuming with its King Ubu-like grotesque geometrical designs.

The women's pact is unflinching: if the wedding must take place, the grooms will pay with their lives, regardless of nascent feelings and appeals toward compassion and barter. If staunch feminists feel love cannot exist unless both parties freely engage into its official pact and remain free-standing without male control, the men, in their sports' routine, argue they have been pigeonholed into expectations for their brutish provider roles stemming from the atavistic demands of war where violence must be turned on and then jettisoned for tenderness on the home front.

The Italian matron, Bella, weary of her own experience in less enlightened times, offers a more pragmatic view of marriage where resigned truce follows the fall from the euphoric hunt-like courtship leading to the altar, and this for the sole sake of raising a family.

The play offers truly magical moments, from the opening scene with Lydia bathing, with elegant brief nudity, against John Robinson's striking black and white set of a few railings and columns with fluid drapes highlighted by Tonya Moake's lighting.

The final judgment underscores justice's flaws and failings, with the justification that love and humanness should trump all, and that blood baths are pointlessly fueled, often by retaliation.

This emotional mood piece is original theater at its absolute best, and one of Chance's greatest stagings to date. Running in tandem with Oanh Nguyen's darkly steamy Cabaret, the double billing is stunning summer entertainment.

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THEATER REVIEW

Big Love
by Eric Marchese, Back Stage West

July 13, 2005

As fodder for novels, plays, and films, the battle of the sexes is nothing new. Indeed the oldest surviving Greek drama, Aeschylus' The Suppliant Women, deals with the fallout when a hardy band of Greek women, roped into arranged marriages with their cousins, takes matters into its own hands by fleeing Greece before the constricting knot of matrimony, with its life of subservience, can be tied.

If Charles L. Mee's Big Love, from 2000, sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it's a freeform reimagining of this ancient tale, meshing contemporary sensibilities regarding the role of women in society with political concerns of the second half of the 20th century. In many ways it's a mixed bag, but Mee rarely allows himself to stray from his true subjects: how men and women interrelate, and how the perceptions of each gender toward the other tend to get in the way of true harmony.

Director Jocelyn A. Brown's staging is lively and brimming with energy. Its black-and-white color scheme for costumes (Irina Kruzhilina) and set (John Robinson) underscores the theme of polarity. As three sisters, Alex Bueno's tough, militant Thyona is convinced men can only exploit women, resolved to stand up to them, and resentful she can't simply let her guard down; Bonnie Wickeraad's Olympia is a soft, pretty-in-pink ballerina type in love with love; and Keri Safran's Lydia is uncertain about men, still trying to formulate an approach that works. Bill Elverman's Constantine is a fierce, ferocious, macho man, and his scenes with Bueno are electric. Paired with Safran, Dimas Diaz's Nikos is gentle and tentative, and Ricky Culbertson lightens things up as a cross-dressing Greek.

"Big Love," presented by and at The Chance Theater, 5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim. Sat. 4 p.m., Sun. 6 p.m. Jul. 10-Aug. 14. $20-35. (714) 777-3033.

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THEATER REVIEW

'Big' on laughs, bigger on message
Review: In its O.C. premiere, this update of an ancient Greek drama proves to be a mixed bag.
by Eric Marchese, OC Register

July 15, 2005

Had Charles L. Mee decided to write something entirely original about the battle of the sexes, he may have devised something as funny and as profound as "Big Love." Instead, however, Mee rummaged through the history of the theater, deciding that "The Suppliant Women" constituted a solid basis for a new play on the subject.

He was right: Written by Aeschylus around 460 B.C., "Women" is among the oldest surviving Greek dramas. Its subject? How a group of Greek women, trapped in arranged marriages to their cousins, escape from Greece before the suffocating knot of matrimony can be tied. In a way, it's the first play to deal with women's liberation.

Despite the fact that Mee's free-form "reimagining" of this ancient tale uses music, song and dance, and even a touch of transvestitism, "Big Love" never loses sight of its true subject - how women and men interrelate. Mee's take on the role of women in society is a decidedly contemporary one, but his point is that man- woman relations have scarcely changed in 2,500 years. More subtle, he notes, is the fact that each gender's perception of the other forms a primary barrier to romantic harmony.

In the 2000 play's Orange County premiere at The Chance Theater, Jocelyn A. Brown's lively, cannily cast staging brims with energy, elevating what in lesser hands would be confusing. "Big Love" is still a mixed bag, but Brown adds devices that create resonances within the script, keeping us focused on the plight of three sisters who are among the 50 Greek women seeking asylum at the sprawling villa of Piero (Michael Jablonski) in an unnamed town on Italy's west coast.

Though Mee's text wanders into musings on subjects such as genocide, our eyes rarely stray from sisters Thyona (Alex Bueno), Lydia (Keri Safran) or Olympia (Bonnie Wickeraad). The leader, Thyona has the tough attitude of a kung-fu fighter or female wrestler. She proclaims that men "are a biological accident," and she means to defy them at every turn. The frivolous Olympia loves men, and loves being loved by them, while Lydia admits that not all men are bad, yet she can't quite bring herself to trust them.

Clad in black leather (where Lydia wears white and Olympia pink), Bueno's Thyona is the engine that drives "Big Love." Mee lends us insight into the character when Thyona asks her sisters if they think she enjoys the anger she feels toward men, and Bueno invests her with the courage of her convictions and just a hint of ambivalence.

Constantine is the fierce leader of the Greek grooms who, having immigrated to the U.S., believe they can have whatever they want. Using slash-and-burn methods, he means to take Thyona by force, if necessary. Mee provides Constantine a monologue meant to explain the male perspective - that men are, by nature, prone to violence - and Bill Elverman convinces us that the character's macho swagger is the result of primitive rage. Bueno matches him blow for blow; their scenes together are electric.

Safran gives Lydia romantically tentative shadings, while her would-be husband, Nikos (Dimas Diaz), is the quintessential nice guy - a gentle soul with a comic penchant for overanalyzing relationships, convinced that Lydia should be free to choose a future husband. While Wickeraad's Olympia is an ultrafeminine ballerina, with a coquettish approach to love, her opposite number, Oed (rhymes with "Ed"), played by Bryan Barton, is essentially nondescript.

Much in Mee's script draws focus from the subject of relationships: Piero's sentiments that he can't risk taking in refugees is modernized by his references to Kosovo, Rwanda and other hot spots that have seen ethnic conflicts. Also with parallels to much 20th- century violence, Piero's mother, Bella, argues that the world can't condemn those who plead for help, are ignored, then take matters into their own hands.

Jablonski's portrayal of Piero is that of a soft-spoken soul who believes in the rule of law. As Bella, Annie Mezzacappa uses a heavy Italian accent and is warmly maternal, with a glimmer of sadness. She's more joyous, and comical, in the smaller role of Eleanor, a sensual, life-loving young newlywed who's a walking sex manual, and Ricky Culbertson also leavens the play's heavier moments as Piero's nephew, who loves dressing up in pink women's clothes (and a hot-pink wig) and serenading those in the first row.

Irina Kruzhilina costumes the sisters in outrageously designed wedding gowns, while the three grooms wear tuxes with outsized shoulders, tails, cuffs and bow ties, in a black-and-white scheme emphasizing the script's concept of polarity.

Freelance writer Eric Marchese has covered entertainment for the Register since 1984.

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