Review: Big Love by Texas State University
by Michael Meigs
Charles Mee's quirky fable Big Love is a reworking of the Greek legend of the Danaids, drawing in part on the earliest extant fragment of Western drama, The Suppliants. It's a story of the war between men and women.
In that text Aeschylus presents about the first third of the story of the 50 daughters of Danaeus and the 50 sons of his twin brother Aegyptus, all of the youngsters being the great-great-grandchildren of the union of Zeus with Io, a mortal princess. The women reject their suitor cousins and flee with their father Danaeus to Argos, where they seek and receive sanctuary by vote of the Argive citizens. The ships of Aegyptus arrive, a herald and soldiers try to drag the women away from the Argive shrine to Zeus, and the King of Argos rebuffs them. The young women rejoice, the Aegyptians withdraw with threats, and the manuscript ends just as things are getting interesting.
In the legend, Danaeus eventually yields his daughters to the 50 young men, but he secretly instructs them to kill their new husbands on their wedding nights. All obey accept one, who has fallen in love with her man. She's brought to trial but successfully defended by Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
Although it's a fragment, Aeschylus's text is heady stuff. In Morshead's 19th century translation, for example, the chorus of young women laments,
I dare not, I dare not abide: my heart yearns, eager to fly;
And dark is the cast of my thought; I shudder and tremble for fear.
My father looked forth and beheld; I die of the sight that draws near.
And for me be the strangling cord, the halter made ready by Fate,
Before to my body draws nigh the man of my horror and hate.
Before I will own him as lord, as handmaid to Hades I go!
Aeschylus was setting up conflicts involving forced matrimony, the guests' right to hospitality and asylum and the inviolability of sacred places -- with a strong emphasis on the honors and obligations of democracy.
Charles Mee proclaims himself a "reworker." His website makes available the texts of his own plays, including this one, for potential transformation and re-use. He explains the concept: "Please feel free to take the plays from this website and use them freely as a resource for your own work: that is to say, don't just make some cuts or rewrite a few passages or re-arrange them or put in a few texts that you like better, but pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results. "
For Big Love, Mee acknowledges Aeschylus as his principal source but not the only one. "Big Love is also inspired by, or takes texts from, Klaus Theweleit, Leo Buscaglia, Gerald G. Jampolsky, Valerie Solanus, Maureen Stanton, Lisa St Aubin de Teran, Sei Shonagon, Eleanor Clark, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Kate Simon, and Laurie Williams, among others."
You won't find any of the above information in the Texas State program for Big Love, directed by Caleb Straus. You could intuit the outcome of the legend, though, because under the leadership of the fierce Thyona (Keeley Lambert), those 50/girls/50 are not giving up without a bloody riposte.
What is it with Chuck Mee and bathtubs? Here are the stage directions for the opening:
Lydia walks up the aisle, looking somewhat disoriented, carrying a wedding bouquet, in a white wedding dress that is disheveled, a little torn in places, dirty in spots. She steps up onto the stage, goes to the bathtub, drops the bouquet on the floor, takes off all her clothes, or simply walks out of them, steps into the tub, leans her head back against the rim, exhausted, and closes her eyes, her arms thrown back out of the tub as though she were crucified, as we listen to the music finish playing.
Ashley Rhodes as Lydia doesn't dump the dress, but otherwise the action unrolls as Mee envisioned: she's discovered by Giuliano, the gentle young man whose family owns the house that Lydia has mistaken for a hotel. She's the first of the fifty escaped brides and a member of the representative trio that ask for shelter and asylum in this Italian villa. The fifty are fleeing from their home in Greece where the authorities wouldn't countenance the girls' refusal of marriage contracts made before their births with their fifty male cousins from America.
That bathtub remains onstage and is not used again. It's counterbalanced in Andrea Ball's abstract, evocative set design by a baby grand piano, mid-stage right, which is never used.
Big Love is a blend of farce and emoticons. Sensible Lydia is joined by Thyona of amazonian scorn, also in a wedding outfit, and by Olympia the barbie doll (Christine Tucker), similarly attired. Giuliano, played by Curtis Barber as sweet and totally gay, gets Mama Bella (Tina Morille) and brother Piero (Storm Adams) involved. When the suitors show up, they are the worst sort of hot male pigs.
Director Straus lets 'em rip and he stages an intensely kinetic show. Both the three women and the three men are big babies, raging with self-certainty and emotions. You get to see some fine tantrums and confrontations. Big Constantine (Michael Holley) is the most impressive of these and he makes the most of a monologue that paints him as a towering inferno of panting libido.
But he's not alone; there's lots of heavy breathing in this show. His slim brother Nikos (Jack Diblasi) is at first just as adamant, but he becomes seriously distracted when he meets sensible Lydia; their debate turns into an encounter turns into quicksilver mutual attraction.
This being the 21st century, there's no Daddy Danaeus to speak for the girls. From the first, patient Piero is reluctant to get involved, agreeing to mediate only after Thyona's threat to have all 50 sisters hang themselves in his garden. To no avail, of course. With Thyona leading one side and Constantine leading the other, the negotiations break down.
Tina Morille as Mama Bella is the only authoritative voice of reason in these wars of hormones. Early in her dialogue with the newly arrived brides, she recounts the outcomes of her own eleven sons, to the hilarious accompaniment of a basket of squishy tomatoes. And it's Bella who presides over the trial at the end, philosophically summarizing amidst sprawled victims the inevitability of love. And she has the credentials: both of her remaining "good" sons are attractively well-adjusted. Curtis Barber as Giuliano is lovable and executes some wildly impressive dance steps; Storm Adams as Piero sighs and does his best to bridge differences, despite his misgivings
Big Love is Aeschylus super-lite, a chipper chance for the young company to act out a comic story about love, power and domination for the video generation. It's pretty thin but it's good fun, nevertheless.
EXTRAS
Click to view title page for Big Love and information about the Department of Theatre and Dance
Click to view program for Big Love by Charles Mee at Texas State University
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Big Love
by Charles Mee
Texas State University
