"Big Love – Experimental
Theatre Chicago"
Chicago Reader Review
"True love has no conditions," says one character in
Charles L. Mee's exuberant updated adaptation of Aeschylus' tragedy
The Suppliant Women. And when conditions are put on love, there
are terrible consequences. Fifty sisters try to avoid marrying their
crass American cousins by fleeing Greece for Italy. In Jaclyn Biskup's
Experimental Theatre Chicago production, the setting is an elegant
Italy of opera and candelabras, and that formality sometimes translates
into dramatic stiffness. But for the most part the cast handles
Mee's absurd situations with lightness and delicacy. Of the three
sisters Mee focuses on, Abbey Borkin is especially wonderful as
Lydia, the conflicted woman who may love her captor. Sheila Regan
is ferocious as the sister who hates men, and Amanda Link has a
baby-doll sensuality as the sister who loves them. True love might
have no conditions--but in this work it sure is complicated. Through
6/26: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM. Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division,
312-388-7660. $12-$20.
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