Fleetwood Mac sang it best — “Looking out for love. Big, big love.”
That is what some of the brides and grooms want in Charles Mees’ play “Big Love,” being performed this weekend at the University of Maine.
The would-be brides don’t want to be married off to cousins they hardly know, so they bolt from Greece to Italy seeking refuge at a villa. The grooms follow and claim the brides.
“Big Love” is based on Aeschylus’ “The Suppliants,” one of the earliest Greek plays. The multimedia 90-minute or so production was first performed in 2000, but it hasn’t lost its edge.
Mees raises questions about love, marriage, sex and gender roles in society. The playwright’s message is one of love and forgiveness, but his characters wonder aloud what makes an individual masculine or feminine.
Director Tom Mikotowicz puts the audience on risers on the Hauck Auditorium stage along with his cast and covers the proscenium front of the stage with a scrim. The three-quarter round setting makes the production such an intimate experience that theatergoers feel as though they are sitting on an Italian hillside spying on the occupants.
Katie Dube, Nicole Felix and Mackenzie Peacock portray sisters Lydia, Thyona and Olympia, respectively. All three give passionate and nuanced performances, but Felix gives Thyona a fiery fierceness that fills the auditorium. She never slips into nasty bitchiness, which would have been easier to portray.
Felix’s fine performance allows Peacock to shine as the naive, sunshiney sister who finds a steely resolve she doesn’t suspect she has. Dube’s Lydia is the deep thinker, stunned by her capacity to love and how that love impacts her. Both actresses give thoughtful and emotional portrayals that humanize what could have been caricatures rather than characters.
Brothers Nikos, Constantine and Oed are played by Fenton Cummings, Reed Davis and William Krason, respectively. Davis’ performance stands above the others, especially in Constantine’s speech on masculinity. He gives a performance as fierce and nuanced as Felix’s.
Nathan Reeves, who gave a charismatic performance in last year’s UMaine production of “Urinetown,” shines again as Guiliano, who lives in the villa where the women take refuge. It is hard to doubt the transforming power of love after Reeves sings, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”
As Bella, the villa’s matriarch, Taylor Cronin exudes wisdom beyond her years. She is a calming presence in the sometimes chaotic storm the playwright periodically unleashes.
Mikotowicz’s production is true to Mees’ theatrical vision.
“I like plays that are not too neat, too finished, too presentable,” Mees said on his website. “My plays are broken, jagged, filled with sharp edges, filled with things that take sudden turns, careen into each other, smash up, veer off in sickening turns. That feels good to me. It feels like my life. It feels like the world.”
The cast and crew of “Big Love” delivers a show full of Mees’ sharp edges. Still, his tendency to stop the action so the characters can sing the 1963 hit single “You Don’t Own Me” or run around the stage in wedding gowns in a Keystone cop-style chase gets old fast and stops the flow of his fascinating dialogue.
“Big Love” is a challenging show but is a good choice for college students, who are supposed to be questioning everything. Students at the University of Maine’s School for the Performing Arts meet it with style, grace and flair without dulling any of Mees’ sharp edges.
“Big Love” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday at Hauck Auditorium in the Memorial Union at the University of Maine. For tickets, visit umaine.edu/spa/tickets or call 581-1718.