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Full nudity, raving lunatics throwing themselves about, violence blood and murder! What more could you possibly desire? Big Love at convergence is mayhem, a theatrical free for all: part Greek tragedy (which it was) part Grand Guignol and part battle of the sexes.

Based on Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Woman, Charles Mee updates the ancient play to make it a little timelier and Clyde Simon, director, does the rest, adding his unique penchant for comic timing and three-dimensional sense of theater. This sense is perhaps best demonstrated by the spontaneous musical interlude during which the grooms perform a combination rap number and Tom Waits extravaganza—utilizing metal pails, stomping feet, and other make shift instruments.

Liz Conway is great as Lydia, who ultimately betrays her sister’s compact of nuptial slaughter because she truly (accidentally) falls in love with Nikos (Scott Gorbach). Bobby Williams plays a wonderfully remote Piero; Laurel Johnson does an excellent job as the often confused and bubble-headed Olympia; Tony Thai provides much needed light-hearted relief as the gay mediator between the sexes; and, as always, one cannot miss the performance of Lucy Bredeson-Smith as Bella.

The rants and diatribes from each sex are often too long and border on cliché and tedium. But the glorious absurdity of the play is a strength, as is the hard-chiseled difference between the sexes.

The play is worth seeing if you can manage to get in, as I think its on its way to selling out.

So, this post is long past the performance run…but I still want to say something about it, as it was/is the first convergence show for 2009.

I don’t mean any disrespect to the other actors in the play, but this play clearly requires a strong female lead and it was very strongly delivered by Lucy Bredeson-Smith. In fact, it’s hard to conceive of this play working without her. When I see performances like the one Bredeson-Smith delivered, I am reminded of the stamina it takes to be an actor and I am forever in awe of it. I often think I’d like to give it a go, but doubt I lack that most fundamental of characteristics; the characteristic that makes it possible to deliver night after night after night. Eleven years ago I went to Stratford, Ontario to see some plays. The play that impressed upon me, the first time, this fact of the stamina required for theater acting was Tennesee William’s Night of the Iguana. For those of you unfamiliar with the play, a “reverend” and bus tour guide with a predilection for young women, has a nervous breakdown in Mexico. For the actor, Geordie Johnson, who played the reverend Shannon (and who needs a new design for his website), the intensity of almost constantly being on stage and the high energy required to portray a nervous breakdown is exhausting even to watch. And to think the man had to do performance after performance three to four times per week from April through November (and this just one play–he was also in two or three others). Needless to say, my admiration goes out to actors and, in this case, to Lucy Bredeson-Smith who delivered her role three nights a week for five weeks with no less energy and certainly not much less of a physical demand, given the frequent costuming changes (ah em, including some rather large knockers).

I won’t talk too much about the play, as it was not one of my favorites by Paula Vogel. I thought the concept of twins and their dual natures was interesting, as well as the dual nature represented in their sons. I though the use of nuclear holocaust as a metaphor was unique as well as the nightmarish dream sequences that were the apocalyptic visions of the twins. More to the political side is the diametrically opposed natures of the twins: one a rebel, hippie, anarchist, lesbian; the other a virginal, mother, conservative talk show host, mental case; combine to point out the schism in our national psyche.

The play was worth seeing though for Bredeson-Smith’s performance.