Fresh Perspectives: HPU Anthology of First Year Writing, Spring 2014

Entertaining Battle of Sexists: A Review of Big Love (By Pancy Thein Lwin) Big Love by Charles L. Mee, a play about fifty brides who tried to take refuge in a foreign country driven by the fear of marrying their fifty respective potential grooms, was inspired by The Suppliants, a Greek play written by Aeschylus in 492 B.C. I watched Big Love in the Kennedy Theatre at University of Hawai‘i Manoa during the theatre’s celebration of its 50th anniversary.

Big Love could be categorized as a tragedy due to the brides’ attempt to avoid the marriage contract by devising a brutal plan to kill their husbands. In making the paramount decision of being able to choose their life partners, the different women present diverse perspectives and reasons. In this patriarchal society, some of the women who suffered from the male oppression turn their inner mental wounds toward hating men and come to believe that they do not need men in their lives. Marriage, to most of them, seems like slavery, as they are expected to serve their husbands without gaining much from their partners in return. One of the brides, Thyona, is such a woman. Olympia and Lydia, on the other hand, do not show extreme hatred towards men as Thyona does.

In Part One, the plot explains what happened to the fifty sisters and how Lydia (Karissa MurrellMyers), Olympia (Mareva Minerbi) and Thyona (Kaitlin Souza) have different views on men.

After studying the first part of the dialogue, I began to sympathize with the fate of the fifty women who were forced to marry their cousins, whom they had never met before. Initially I could not recognize the inner thoughts of the women because they were portrayed collectively as the runaway brides-to-be who did not want to marry their grooms. As the play goes on, when the owner of the house, Piero, refuses to let the sisters stay in his house, they are forced to accept the only option offered and submit to the arranged marriages. Reluctant to follow the order, the sisters make a pact to kill each of their husbands on their own.

The climax occurs when they are having the wedding party. As I watched, I was very excited to know whether all the brides would kill their grooms. The falling action after the climax begins when Thyona finds Nikos (Treyvon Love), Lydia’s groom, alive beside Lydia, followed by the resolution of the conflict that Bella (Josephine Calvo) acquitted Lydia and tolerates both Thyona and Olympia. The generalization of all these women’s different motives, the development of a plot reflecting the different meanings of marriage in each bride’s mind, and finally the depiction of the bold action taken by Lydia, make the play more artistically vibrant, thought-provoking and thrilling. Throughout the play, I was enthralled by the well-written plot twists and turns, bringing the audience to surprises through suspense.

The play depicts the extreme opinions of men and women towards each other through excellent characterization. All the characters were static except Lydia. Thyona and Olympia exemplify two different types of women—one who hates men, and one who seeks to impress them by beautifying herself. As soon as Olympia arrives at Piero’s house after running away from the wedding reception, she tries to find the cosmetics. Olympia asks, “Soaps, John Frieda Sheer Blond Shampoo and Conditioner for Highlighted Blonds, something to make a woman feel,” as soon as she sees Piero (Big Love). That action suggests the definition of women as beautiful trophies owned by their husbands, and her views on seeing man as a creature for nothing more than fulfilling women’s fondness of luxuries.

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