Big Love

Wedding bell blahs: As the grooms pursue, the brides of Big Love try to escape tying the knot.

by Toby Zinman

Charles L. Mee’s Big Love was the hit of the Humana Festival in Louisville three years ago where I had the good luck to see it in its brilliant first production. Because it is radically contemporary as well as classical (based as it is on Aeschylus’ ancient play, The Suppliant Maidens), because it is hilarious as well as profound, because it risks being romantic without being sentimental, because it requires a big, sophisticated and athletic cast, it is an immense challenge -- for the theater company as well as the audience.

And to prepare us for this is a knockout of a set (designed by Jerry Rojo, reminiscent of the gorgeous, surreal set for the Wilma's production of The Invention of Love two seasons ago). An immense hand holds a cracked egg with a flower growing from it (debt to Dali), and suspended on the back wall are two red lips which seem to be smoking an inverted Ionic column, while stage right, there is a huge female torso made of building blocks. The location is, technically, a palazzo in Italy, but we have stepped into myth and fantasy.

Fifty brides have fled their group marriage in Greece. Seven representative brides, in their bedraggled wedding gowns, lug suitcases onstage. These seven yield to three who will be the central characters: the heroine Lydia (Danielle Langlois), the ditsy blonde Olympia (Amy Gorbey) and tough girl Thyona (Danielle Skraastad). They beg asylum. But, it turns out, the rich Italians will play host but not protector.

Fifty grooms (in their tuxes) are in hot pursuit, arriving commando style via helicopter. The central men are nice guy Nikos (Paolo Andino) and tough guy Constantine (Steven Rishard), whose tremendous monologue about the burden of manhood is the pivot of the play. The women save themselves by proving that when people are left unprotected by law or family, they must make their own laws and those turn out to be primitive and violent. The issues here are national politics, gender politics and love, which, for Mee, "trumps all" always. Life and forgiveness triumph over justice and revenge.

There is much to look at, listen to, think about. But somehow, it all falls flat. The tempo set by director Jiri Zizka is so slow and plodding that the comedy simply evaporates. The dialogue is recited rather than spoken, and so stiltedly that I got tired of listening. Comedy, as everybody knows, is all in the timing, and the timing is way off in this production. The heavy-handedness extends to every aspect: The silent love scene goes on too long, the song played on a tiny grand piano goes on too long, the illustrative projections of skeletons and butterflies are so blatant as to be embarrassing and pull focus at exactly the wrong moments. The actors -- male and female -- fling themselves onto the floor with wild abandon, but often, unfortunately, sacrifice much of the dialogue in the process.

Big Love

Through April 26, Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce sts., 215-546-7824.