Unreconstructed jokesters who still derive amusement from invoking the so-called "battle of the sexes" may well consider retiring that divisive wheeze after viewing a genuine gender war, where those of Heart both Faint and Stout are wounded, sometimes going so far as to die, and nobody "wins" Fair anything. Our heroines in You on the Moors Now are drawn from 19th-century literature: Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Catherine Earnshaw, and Louisa May Alcott's Josephine "Jo" March. We meet them just after all four have received proposals of marriage that they are reluctant to accept. United in sorority, they flee to the wild moors of England, pursued by suitors Darcy, Rochester, Heathcliff, and Laurence, whose distress at being rejected soon gives way to indignation. Fugitive escape-and-evasions ensue, abetted by peripheral characters from the respective narratives, and culminating in confrontations ending in a truce only after blood is shed. A decade later (though looking more like two hundred years), veterans on both sides reunite at the memorial commemorating their service. Jaclyn Backhaus' script initially leads us to anticipate an Aaron Posner-styled deconstruction. We giggle at dialogue combining text lifted verbatim from the novels and modern expressions like "do you think I'm a robot, you dickhead?" Auxiliary personnel—Bennett, March and Rivers siblings, Mssrs. Bingley and Linton, Marmee, and grandfather Laurence—are played as broad caricatures. Battlefield formations mimic basketball, foursquare, break dance and video games. Death has no place in courtship, however, and when Rochester is mortally wounded and Catherine fatally stabbed, Heathcliff declares, "I don't want to play any more!" Thus it is that in the Battle of the Moors museum (founded by Darcy) at its anniversary celebration (hosted by Amy March Laurence), we may chuckle at, say, astronaut Jane arriving gravity-lagged only hours after landing, but our smiles fade when presented with Rochester's elegant Ray-Bans concealing his blind eyes. As the one-time lovers recount their post-armistice activities, the wisdom of discovering your own destiny before attaching it to another's becomes manifest. Even the still-angry Heathcliff comes to accept the loss of his fallen comrade. Intrigue operating on this many levels simultaneously isn't easy to absorb in a single sitting—especially when alley-staging impairs audibility in scenes played on the perimeter of the Den's first-floor room—but under Devon De Mayo's vigorous direction, a 14-member ensemble led by Tien Doman, Emjoy Gavino, Deanna Myers and Brittney Love Smith swarms over the expansive space with gleeful enthusiasm reflecting youthful convictions as yet unaware of the ironic paradox rendering romance sweetest when tempered by experience.
