Under magenta lights, a violent orgiastic scene rages to a creepy, seductive techno beat. Brides and grooms strip to their underwear, simulating sex and murder while wedding guests flit around, maniacally snapping photos, flicking champagne and ballroom dancing with audience members.
Thus unfolds the climax, so to speak, of Production Workshop's new play, "Big Love," which opens tonight in the PW downstairs space. The play, directed by Sophia Shackleton '09, was written by Charles Mee and adapted by Tara Schuster '08.
Shackleton said PW has taken some liberties with Mee's play, interjecting new monologues written by Schuster. After interviewing cast members, she incorporated their personal experiences into the play, Shackleton said. Mee's original play is in turn based on "The Danaids" by Aeschylus, according to his Web site.
Set in contemporary Italy, the play focuses on 50 Greek sisters who are escaping unwanted marriage to their 50 male cousins. They arrive at an Italian estate and attempt to take refuge with an Italian family.
PW's set features a two-story facade of an Italian villa and a water-filled pool in the middle of the raised stage. Rows of twinkle lights crisscross the ceiling of the first-floor performance space.
The play opens as one of the sisters, the gentle Lydia (Andrea Gompf '08), bursts through the performance space doors in a wedding dress, pushing and dragging a floral love seat, to light-hearted music. She is soon joined by two sisters, representative of the 50 - the aggressive Thyona (Caroline Straty '10) and seductive Bella (Chrissie Bodznick '10). The sisters angrily rearrange the furniture on the stage while singing Britney Spears' "Stronger."
The three sisters lobby their cause to the family - Italian mama Olympia (Jenna Horton '09) and her relatives Giuliano (Paul Cooper '11) and Piero (Rafael Cebrian '11). In a memorable scene, Olympia, sitting on the second-floor terrace, describes her many adult sons, while handling tomatoes, dropping them or smashing them based on her level of anger or disappointment with her sons.
Piero, who seems to be in charge, is reluctant to intercede on their behalf, so the sisters persuade him by singing and sidling up seductively. Though they secure his promise of help, Thyona doesn't trust him, and the women begin debating whether men can be decent and good. They break into an increasingly frenetic workout routine and an escalating rant about men that ends in a loud scream. This coincides with the arrival of the prospective grooms, dramatically bursting from the top of a wooden platform. Dressed in powder-pink jumpsuits and sunglasses, they strut on scene to a pulsing techno beat, dance in unison and peel off the jumpsuits to reveal suits and wedding-appropriate garb.
Constantine (Sammy McGowan '11), the aggressive alpha male of the three, speaks seductively to his intended bride, but upon being rebuffed, explodes into a violent rage. This segues into another techno interlude as the characters dance and grind to the beat and Oed (Jonathan Gordon '11) monologues from the second-floor terrace.
Lydia shows more vulnerability than her sisters, dancing with wedding guest Leo (Sam Alper '11) after saying he reminds her of her father. Left alone on stage, she is approached by her intended groom, Nikos (Herald Sports Columnist Ellis Rochelson '09), who confesses that he has real feelings for her and wishes to court her. When things go awry, the men go into a destructive frenzy, echoing an earlier scene of female destruction by throwing rubber balls, shouting and dragging a mattress onto the stage.
"F--- these women!" Constantine concludes. "People say it's hard to be a woman. You know it's not easy being anyone." He rants about the qualities he wants in a woman as he struggles to put a bottom sheet on the mattress, which he then strews with rose petals.
It soon becomes evident that the marriage is going to take place whether the sisters like it or not. Their inability to escape their fate leads them to act drastically - they decide to kill their future husbands on their wedding nights. Hence the orgy. In the end, Constantine and Oed lie dead and Thyona and Bella are dismayed to learn that Lydia has not killed her new husband, Nikos, because she loves him.
The play asks some difficult questions about relationships between the sexes: "How do you navigate giving yourself to somebody but also valuing yourself?" Shackleton asked.
An emphasis in Charles Mee's work is finding ways to force and heighten emotion for the audience, she said in an interview with The Herald. "What affects an audience without them deciding to be affected?" The result is a fragmented show where characters burst into song, techno blares, lights flash, walls crash down and a cake catapults to the ground. Wedding guests interact with the audience - passing them champagne, kissing them, dancing and sitting with them. Shackleton described the production as close to Mee's vision.
"Love" has proved a challenging play for PW's four-week production process because of the technical complexities involved, Shackleton said. Their small budget has also been sapped by the cost of quickly used items, like tomatoes - Shackleton anticipates running through 50 during the play's run. As of the Wednesday night rehearsal, the cast and staff were still tackling some of the show's technical elements and the mess of the trampled cake and tomatoes, only incorporated in the final stages of preparation.
The show will run at PW today through Monday at 8 p.m., with an additional show Saturday at 11:30 p.m. Tickets can be reserved online and must be picked up at the box office one hour before show time.
