WEEKENDER: GOING OUT
10 | FEBRUARY.22.2013 | FRIDAY
Project SEE’s ‘Big Love’ lives up to its name
By Candace Chaney
Contributing Culture Writer
There is truth in advertising in
Project SEE Theatre’s latest production,
Big Love. The play emphasizes the
bigness of its subject matter, love, in
both performance and technical aspects.
The play’s very premise is
intentionally hyperbolic.
Fifty sisters flee forced marriages to
their 50 cousins, all brothers, seeking
asylum at the home of a wealthy Italian,
Piero (played here with somber fairness
by Peter Stone) and his mother, Bella
(Patti Heying, embodying Old World
wisdom).
The sisters’ betrothed cousins come
looking for them, determined to claim
their brides. The ensuing struggle is
mired in big themes — gender wars,
aggression and submission, free will and
social justice and, of course, love itself.
If the whole thing sounds a bit
Greek, that’s because it is.
Historian-turned-playwright Charles
Mee modeled Big Love after Aeschylus’
The Suppliants, reimagining the tragedy
for modern times. The play debuted to
wide acclaim in 2000 at the Humana
Festival of New American Plays in Louisville and has been popular since.
Director Sullivan Canaday White
strikes an unlikely but elegant balance
between ancient and contemporary elements by embracing the huge scale of the
themes in Mee’s script, which is written
in verse. Classical scenes are rhythmically
punctuated by sudden, frenzied, euphoric,
extremely loud musical romps, each of
which emphasizes group relationships
(think sisters dancing in their underwear
singing You Don’t Own Me) before propelling the plot forward like a slingshot.
White wrings out every bit of space in
the Downtown Arts Center’s black box
theater, with in-the-round action pulsing
to the walls and even into the risers
before contracting inward to the center
of Mike Sanders’ octagonal set design.
There, a porcelain claw-foot tub reposes,
its organic curves contrasting with the
clean geometry of the floor space.
This is where we meet Lydia (Ellie
Clark) as she slips off her wedding
dress and gets into the tub, casting
off her former life. She is later joined
by her 49 sisters, represented by
four actors. For a few moments, the
sisters are safe and happy, but all of
that changes when their jilted grooms
helicopter into the villa to claim what
they think is rightfully theirs.
It is no coincidence that Mee wrote
each bride as a potent foil for her
counterpart groom. Take Thyona (Holly
Brady) and her intended, Constantine
(Evan Bergman). Brady is fierce as
Thyona, the unrelenting defender of
individual freedom and an ardent man
hater; Bergman is raw and primal as
Constantine, the ultimate misogynist
brute. They are so alike in the vehemence
of their stances that you almost want
them to get together, an impossibility, of
course, but one that brings symmetry to
the opposing forces that drive the play.
Bergman’s monologue about the
expectation that men should be animal-
LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER | LEXGO.COM
THEATER REVIEW
‘Big Love’
What: Project SEE Theatre’s production of
Charles L. Mee’s play.
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22, 23; 2 p.m. Feb.
24
Where: Black Box Theatre, Downtown Arts
Center, 141 E. Main St.
Tickets: $20 adults, $16 ages 65 and
older, $12 student with valid ID; available
at Downtown Arts Center box office, by
calling (859) 225-0370 or at
Lexarts.tix.com.
Learn more: Projectseetheatre.com
istic killers during war and repress those
urges the rest of the time is one of the
most riveting moments of the show.
Clark and Timothy Hull share a
similarly raw and revelatory truth in the
chase and retreat of their characters’
romance, each peeling back protective
layers of their characters to expose the
vulnerability and courage that redeem
the tragic demises of their kin.
Candace Chaney is a Lexington-based writer.
W h e n A R T M A T T E R S,
communities F L O U R I S H .
D o n a t e n o w a t lexarts.org
CELEBRATE SPRING
SmART
Grants
to Schools
Public Art
at this annual festival of
fine art & fresh flowers
General
Operating
Support
February 22 – 24
Friday . Saturday . Sunday
noon to 5 pm
admission: $5
Community
Arts Grants
LFUCG
EcoArt
Grants
LexArts.org
859.255.2951
405 Rose St, Lexington, KY / 859.257.5716 / www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum