Total Rating: 
****
Opened: 
March 23, 2000
Ended: 
April 2, 2000
Country: 
USA
State: 
Kentucky
City: 
Louisville
Company/Producers: 
Actors Theater of Louisville (Humana Festival) Producing Dir: Jon Jory:
Theater Type: 
Regional
Theater: 
Actors Theater of Louisville
Theater Address: 
316 West Main Street
Phone: 
(502) 584-1205
Running Time: 
90 min
Genre: 
Comedy-Drama
Author: 
Charles L. Mee
Director: 
Les Waters
Review: 

Seven brides for seven brothers, as in the old MGM musical, is an idea one has little trouble handling.  Raise the number to 50 brides (all sisters!) for 50 brothers, as Charles L. Mee has done in his wacky, uproarious, thought-provoking Big Love, a major hit at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, and the concept blows the mind and shatters laugh-meter records.  Mee has updated the oldest existing Greek drama, The Suppliant Women by Aeschylus, who had 50 brides vowing to murder 50 fiances on their wedding night.  Mee's 50 sisters have arrived at a luxurious Italian villa after fleeing Greece to avoid the 50 brothers (all of whom now live in America) to whom their patriarch betrothed them before they were born.  In the startling opening scene, the sister named Lydia (Carolyn Baeumler) rushes in, strips off her wedding gown, and jumps into a bathtub.  Two other sisters, Olympia (Aimee Guillot) and Thyona (Karenjune Sanchez) quickly follow, and all three launch into their reasons for the mass escape to what they think is a hotel.  When they hurl themselves into a saucy version of the Leslie Gore hit, You Don't Own Me, the audience goes wild. 

The war between the sexes, an age-old story, takes almost no prisoners on Mee's darkling plain of wit, mayhem, and wisdom -- the latter exemplified by a wise old Italian grandmother (Lauren Klein).  This war is not just a war of words, though the words are formidable weapons in themselves; Big Love is a ferociously physical play.  In separate set pieces the women and the men, who have arrived to claim them, throw themselves again and again to the wrestling-mat stage floor while shouting out their rage, frustration and contempt for the opposite sex.  What's not to love, admire, and praise about Big Love?

Parental: 
nudity, violence
Cast: 
Carolyn Baeumler (Lydia), Tony Speciale (Guiliano), Aimee Guillot(Olympia), Karenjune Sanchez (Thyona), Lauren Klein (Bella/Eleanor), Fred Major (Piero/Leo), T. Ryder Smith (Nikos), Mark Zeisler (Constantine),Jeff Jenkins (Third Cousin).
Technical: 
Set: Paul Owen; Costumes: Marcia Dixcy Jory; Lighting Designer: Greg Sullivan; Sound Designer: Malcolm Nicholls; Properties Designer: Ben Hohman; Stage Manager: Alyssa Hoggatt; Assistant Stage Manager: Kathy Preher; Movement Supervisor: Jean Isaacs; Dramaturg: Michael Bigelow Dixon; Casting: Laura Richin Casting
Other Critics: 
TOTALTHEATER Ed Huyck + David Lefkowitz + Anne Siegel !
Critic: 
Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed: 
April 2000