photo credit: Tim Matheson
It's your last chance, and there's only a dozen tickets left, so act quickly.
We got reviewed in the Vancouver Courier, so read up and book up:
big love
At the Telus Studio (UBC) until Feb. 3 Tickets:604-822-2678
Reviewed by Jo Ledingham
Constantine and Oed would surely have preferred to be dumped at the altar by Thyona and Olympia than to meet the grisly fate they meet in Charles Mee's big love.
Master's of Fine Arts candidate Joanna Garfinkel deftly guides her student actors through the minefield that is Mee who takes delight in posing-with equal persuasiveness-all sides of an argument. In big love, the argument is marriage. To wed or not to wed. Whose choice is it? Does love trump justice?
Fifty sisters from Greece have been promised by their father to 50 cousins. Rather than wed men not of their choosing, they sail away and arrive on the shores of Italy where they seek asylum from wealthy Piero (Evan Frayne) and his family, including his wise crone of a mother (Joanna Ranelli) and his gay nephew Giuliano (Kevin Kraussler). But Piero is a man and conservative by nature. The women may have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
Fifty sisters are represented by three: Lydia (Yoshie Bancroft), Thyona (fiery Courtney Lancaster) and malleable, self-absorbed Olympia (disarming Cecile Roslyn.) Daryl King, Spencer Atkinson and Gord Myren portray the three would-be grooms.
Although we're not in the real world in big love and the style of the play is surreal, the questions are real and the arguments about what men and women want are as pressing today as they were in ancient Greece. Constantine, who's all for taking Thyona by force, argues that women say they want someone kind and gentle but, at the same time, expect to be protected. Is aggressive behaviour a switch to be turned on and off? he asks.
Garfinkel draws some excellent performances from this cast and carefully lays out the opposing points of view. Mee is not easy, but this production is very satisfying. The bacchanalia scene is grand; after all, who doesn't love a wedding-cake-in-the-face fiasco-as long as it's not your own?
