Friday, July 18, 2008

Big Love

The new production by the talented Selina Cartmell, whose Macbeth at The Empty Space we reviewed here, is Big Love at the Peacock, and has recently been positively reviewed by Emer O'Kelly in the Sunday Independent, Helen Meany at the Guardian, and Sarah Keating in the Irish Times.

Big Love, by the American playwright Charles Mee, can be read in full on his site here. It's an adaptation of The Danaids (The Suppliants) by Aeschylus (full translation here). Mee's introduction states that 'the setting for the piece should not be real, or naturalistic. It should not be a set for the piece to play within but rather something against which the piece can resonate: something on the order of a bathtub, 100 olive trees, and 300 wine glasses half-full of red wine', and Cartmell's production certainly gets into this spirit, being inventive, energetic and visually arresting - a tonic in another rainy Irish summer.

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