A Runaway bride, one of 50 sisters escaping marriage contracts, takes refuge in a sumptuous Italian villa. Undoing her wedding dress, discarding everything underneath, she is a woman released, jumping into a bathtub, to be cleansed, unchained at last.
This is how the show at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven begins. And it is a show that is really a show. It isn't only a play. ''Big Love'' is the simple, direct, important, easy-to-remember title of a fanciful theater piece you will never forget.
The woman named Lydia and her 49 sisters have sailed away from Greece. No sooner has the boat docked than a helicopter lands, bearing the jilted grooms, all brothers. Wearing military fatigues, as if armed for the marriage wars, they have come to claim their rightful possessions. Tuxedos under uniforms signal presumed victory. A deal is a deal, the brothers insist. The sisters resist. This deal denies their will; it represents prenuptial entrapment, not agreement, they protest. It is rape.
If all this sounds far-fetched, so it is, and it invites flights of the mind. Truth be told, only three brides and three grooms appear, but there is no question that 47 sisters and 47 brothers are waiting in the wings.
''Big Love,'' which is big, (mighty, actually), and about love (justice too) is a fable (as in fabulous), a myth (its origin), an MGM musical in technicolor, a circus and, believe it, a Greek tragedy.
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Mozart, Mendelssohn and Wagner (in a light moment) contributed to the music. Rodgers and Hart too. Not that more modern idioms are overlooked. ''You Don't Know Me,'' the brides belt in show-stopping girl-group defiance.
The more outlandish the show gets, the more immediate its impact. Plot should not be revealed, though the theater's program and newsletter spill it all. Better to let ''Big Love'' just happen to you. Read background material, some written by the playwright, Charles L. Mee, later.
For here is surprise, astonishment and adventure, restored to theater. It should come as no surprise that the show rocking Long Wharf derives from an ancient Greek play, ''The Suppliant Woman,'' and a tragedy at that.
Yet it is Mr. Mee's own special creation. Besides, he took over where Aeschylus might have left off. No one knows the remaining plays in a lost cycle. Practically speaking, it is likely that today's theatergoers will talk of ''Big Love'' for a long time, and remain clueless about ''The Suppliant Woman.''
But it is important to note Greek drama as inspiration. For ''Big Love'' is not about little things. In its beginnings, drama did not bother with common neuroses, bad marriages, dysfunctional families. There were primal themes (revenge, passion, courage) and real issues (good and evil, right and wrong) and they were enacted at gut level.
In theatrical scale, intellectual size and stylistic scope, ''Big Love'' bravely traverses expansive terrain. These men and women all of them right, all of them wronged, represent a search for truth and freedom; the hope for a safe place, a society at peace, a fulfilling universe. Though of the contemporary world, they are not mundane or self-righteous.
It is easy to think that here is the core of feminism, sexism, entitlement. Mr. Mee's questions go deeper. What does it mean to be a man, a woman, a human being, a displaced person?
Remarkably, his leap of boundless imagination has refashioned tragedy into a theatrical statement that is comedic, gymnastic, musical, sensual, shocking and redemptive.
And why is it so joyous when, in the end, frivolity is over? Perhaps Les Walters, whose staging overflows with euphoric, erotic, madly tumultuous sequences, can explain.
But then the answer is in the experience, in wonder, in the agility and grace of lovely actors. Most are repeating roles originated in the show's premiere at the Humana Festival in Louisville last year. Next stop: Berkeley. Coming up: Chicago and Brooklyn. There is no stopping ''Big Love.''
''Big Love'' by Charles L. Mee. Long Wharf Theater. 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven. Performances through April 1. Box office: (203) 787-4282.
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