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Big Lovin' on campus stage
By Roberta Flores
The South Texan
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Jaime Gonzalez / The South Texan
The cast enacts their final scene during Thursday, April 24 performance of "Big Love"
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Although the plot of Big Love, TAMUK’s final theater production which took place April 22 to 24 in the Little Theater, left much of the audience confused there were some memorable performances that made the show entertaining to watch.
The play by Charles Mee is about 50 sisters who flee to Italy after they realize they have no choice but to go through with arranged marriages, to their 50 cousins.
The play enters as Lydia (Lorraine Rodriguez), Thyona (Christina Garcia), and Olympia (Elle Escobedo) have fled to Italy and are asking for help from a family they meet.
Soon after the three prospective grooms of the women Nikos (Rick Saenz), Constantine (James Taylor Maupin IV), and Oed (Buddy Trevino) find the women and attempt to broker a deal with the family who has agreed to help them. The plot gets confusing when a murder pact made by the sisters fails. Two of the grooms are killed and one of them gets to live because of love. There is a trial in which Bella, a woman with 13 sons decides the fate of the women. At the end of the play, the audience is left with many questions.
Costumes, lighting, props and music did an excellent job of setting the scene to the home in Italy.
One of the props was an actual working fountain that characters actually incorporated into the play.
Actors, however, had a problem with accent. Many of the actors who came out in the beginning of the play with an accent, dropped it soon after. Some characters had no accent at all; this also led to some confusion since it was harder to tell the Greek and Italian characters apart. One of the memorable performances of the night was by Garcia, who really showed Thyona as a character both desperate and longing to have freedom to choose her own future.
Of the male characters, Maupin who played Thyona’s husband-to-be Constantine did a good job of showing the male prospective to the arranged marriages.
Thyona was the ring leader of the brides and Constantine of the grooms; as polar opposites and representatives of two very different points of view, they did a good job of balancing out the play.
Rodriguez and Saenz did a good job of playing the most vulnerable and confused characters of the play, Lydia and Nikos. But there were times when it was hard to believe that they were actually in love; the audience really did not see the development of their love in the play.
Another of the memorable characters was the gay/cross-dressing grandson Giuliano played by Bobby Villarreal. He provided the audience with a much needed comedic relief from the serious subject of the play. .