From February 9th to 20th, Temple Theater hosted Charles Mee’s Big Love, a contemporary story of identity, justice, and love.
Big Love begins with the quietly passionate Lydia, played by Senior Sara Howard, who runs down a ramp through the audience and onto the stage, barefoot, dropping naked and exhausted into a tub onstage. After brief interaction with more characters, the plot soon unfolds. Olympia, played by Junior Olivia Dirodio, enters the stage giggling, as the innocently naïve and romantic first sister. Thyona, played by Senior Claire Lenahan, enters independent and defiant, carrying the baggage of her sisters along with her anger towards the men who continuously persecute and exploit. The three sisters represent the 50 women who have fled Greece into Italy to escape their fate; forced marriage to their cousins.
Throughout the play, the girls grapple with their own identities, the meaning of love, and decisions that question morality. The nefarious grooms prove to be more complex than just the “bad guys” as they too question themselves, their situation, and the expectations for men in society.
Some of the most powerful scenes in Big Love are those in which the characters, first the three women and then the three men, come alive with emotion and truth through dance and personal monologues. Thonya screams about how men think she’s delicate and think she can break her as the girls violently throw themselves to the ground and gracefully rise in dance. Each character shouts to the audience, relaying her frustration with society, men, rapists, and politicians.
The plot of Big Love, like life and love, takes turns at the least expected moments, changing the audiences’ perceptions of characters and events. Sophomore Samantha Madera said she thought the play was “all over the place.”
One of the turns the play takes is a murder pact between the sisters; a pact which Lydia breaks to be with her husband. While her sisters strangle and suffocate their forced husbands, Lydia makes love to hers.
“I was confused as to what the point was supposed to be,” Madera said.
In the end, a trial for tyranny and murder chaired by a wise Italian grandmother concludes with the pardoning of each sister. The play’s message of love and justice is left to the audience’s interpretation.
Freshmen Angela Montoni said the message is “that love comes in all forms, shapes and sizes, and that one person’s perception on the concept of love differs greatly from another.”
In her monologue, Lydia talked about her wish for men and women to understand each other.
She said, “We could talk to each other, person to person; get along with each other. Then we could go deep to what a man or a woman really can be; deep down to the mysteries of being alive, of knowing ourselves, to know what it is to live life on earth.”
(Photo Caption: Tomlinson Theater, where Temple hosted Big Love until February 20. Upcoming productions include A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau and A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller.)