this week in theater

THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX

Two generations deal with love, sex, and food in Lincoln Center production (photo by T Charles Erickson)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 26, $87
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love and Sex explores the many facets of the title concepts in light but smart ways, touching on the complicated nature of friendship and family, romance and lust. Friends since they were nine years old, Charlotte (Gayle Rankin) and Jonny (Mamoudou Athie) are now going to the same Virginia college not far from where they were raised, and they have invited her parents, Lucinda (Diane Lane) and Howard (Tony Shalhoub), to come over for what Lucinda quickly decides is a “bohemian” dinner, on a makeshift table with salad, bread, no chairs, and cheap wine. While Lucinda gets right into the spirit of things, Howard has much more trouble, beginning with attempting to sit on the floor, then trying to serve himself some food. Soon the talk turns to the relationship between Jonny, a young black man with a sick mother, and Charlotte, a young Jewish woman preparing her own way in the world. Howard, a successful writer of detective fiction, might have been treating Jonny like a member of the family for the past decade, but now that he thinks that Jonny might become an official part of the family, he is not so happy. But the kids are still teenagers with their whole lives in front of them, and their undefined relationship grows more puzzling when Jonny starts dating another woman — and Charlotte says she has the hots for a fellow coed. Things heat up even further when the four main characters start debating such issues as racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny, religion — and food. (The show features a lot of eating, so you might want to be sure to dine beforehand.) The second act takes place five years later, as some matters have been settled, but most have not, as marriage and divorce enter the conversation.

Jonny (Mamoudou Athie) and Charlotte (Gayle Rankin) contemplate their future in THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX (photo by T Charles Erickson)

Returning to New York theater for the first time since 1977, when she was twelve, the now fifty-year-old Lane (A Little Romance, Unfaithful) is resplendent as Lucinda, her smile lighting up the entire theater, along with her rich southern accent, her character’s flair for life infectious. Shalhoub (Act One, Golden Boy) is terrific as Howard, a bundle of nerves and deeply hidden prejudices who fumbles fantastically in the opening dinner scene, showing a riotous mastery of physical comedy, while standing firm later when he gets into it with Jonny. Athie and Rankin are fine as Jonny and Charlotte, the former timid and withdrawn, the latter energetic and fancy-free, but the play slows down considerably when Lane and Shalhoub are not onstage. One of the busiest directors in New York, Sam Gold, who has helmed such delights as Fun Home, The Realistic Joneses, and Seminar, makes good use of the small Newhouse stage, keeping things moving proficiently on Andrew Lieberman’s minimalist sets, which generally consist of a few pieces of furniture and long drapes in the back. Doran, who has written such other plays as Kin and Nest and for such cable series as Boardwalk Empire and Masters of Sex, has a gift for creating unpredictable situations and taking them further than expected with a smooth calm, although she is occasionally too clever for her own good. The Mystery of Love and Sex is a perfectly pleasant piece of theater, a tasty morsel if not quite the gourmet meal it attempts to be.

FISH IN THE DARK

Brothers Norman (Larry David) and Arthur (Ben Shenkman) fight over where there mother will live in FISH IN THE DARK (photo by Joan Marcus)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 7, $49 – $275
fishinthedark.com

The first act of Larry David’s Broadway debut as writer and actor is pret-ty, pret-ty good; unfortunately, the second act is pret-ty, pret-ty not. David is well known and celebrated — or hated, by some — for his television work: He was the cocreator of Seinfeld (the character of George Costanza, played by Jason Alexander, is inspired by him) and the comic genius behind HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he stars as a self-obsessed version of himself, getting into uncomfortable, cringe-worthy situations that are as funny as they are annoying. He has arrived on Broadway with quite a bang; Fish in the Dark virtually sold out its eighteen-week run at the Cort Theater before it even officially opened and the reviews started coming in. (Only premium seating, ranging from $185 to $499, is now available.) Fish in the Dark is, in effect, an extended episode of Curb, but whereas the cable show lasts a mere half hour, Fish goes on, and on, and on, clocking in at approximately two hours (with intermission). And it feels even longer. Playing what appears to be yet another version of himself — David looks and acts like he’s on the set of Curb, his only nods to being live onstage his exaggerated gestures when he’s talking, as opposed to standing around doing nothing when he’s not — David is Norman Drexel, a urinal salesman whose father, Sidney (Jerry Adler), is in the hospital, on his last legs. Right before Sidney dies, he makes his sons, Norman and Arthur (Ben Shenkman), promise to take care of their mother, Gloria (Jayne Houdyshell), and swear never to let her live alone. Thus begins a fight about which son is supposed to take the widow into their home. Arthur is a well-off divorced single father and successful lawyer, while Norman has much less money and a wife, Brenda (Rita Wilson), who threatens to leave him if he takes in his mother. It’s classic David shtick that gets even more complicated when longtime family housekeeper Fabiana (Rosie Perez) reveals to Norman a very expensive secret. Doing what David does best, he has taken a somewhat familiar, clichéd situation and turns it inside out, getting caught up in trivialities that are lifted to absurdist levels. But it all falls apart in a second act that devolves into repetition, silly slapstick, and dreadful, minor-league-sitcom plot twists.

Norman (Larry David) learns some surprising secrets about his father from housekeeper Fabiana (Rosie Perez) in David’s Broadway debut (photo by Joan Marcus)

Fish in the Dark, which boasts a talented cast of eighteen, also includes battles over a Rolex, eulogies, boob gropes, tipping doctors, reincarnation, and end-of-life care, all given equal weight in typical David fashion. Set changes are made behind a giant screen that is a blown-up State of California death certificate on which information is added or deleted over the course of the show, but it grows tiresome and confusing very quickly. Director Anna D. Shapiro (This Is Our Youth, Of Mice and Men) has done significantly better work; much of Fish in the Dark is too stagnant, with the audience (and the cast) waiting on the next telegraphed punch line. Meanwhile, some of the actors have trouble projecting, while others nearly shake the roof with their line readings. One of the many things that made Curb Your Enthusiasm so effective was that it was not overly scripted, instead providing plenty of room for the actors to improvise, providing a freshness to each exchange, something that is missing from Fish. (Critics were not permitted to see copies of the script, so I can’t verify what’s in it and what’s not, or how it might have changed since the play began previews.) In the fall of 2011, a trio of one-act comedies, Relatively Speaking, by Woody Allen, Elaine May, and Ethan Coen, ran at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The first act of Fish in the Dark would have felt right at home on that shared bill, since you’ll end up curbing your enthusiasm during the second act. Maybe it’s best to leave at intermission, feeling like you’ve seen a live taping of a decent lost episode of Curb.

FASHIONS FOR MEN / ROCKET TO THE MOON

Peter Juhász (Joe Delafield) gets quite a surprise from his wife, Adele (Annie Purcell), in Mint revival of FASHIONS FOR MEN (photo by Richard Termine)

FASHIONS FOR MEN
Mint Theater
311 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 12, $27.50-$65
866-811-4111
www.minttheater.org

A current pair of off-Broadway revivals, one a 1917 Hungarian comedy, the other a 1938 American drama, tackle remarkably similar topics, albeit in very different ways. Written by extremely successful playwrights, each follows an overly kind business owner dealing with relationship issues and financial problems, featuring a number of similar characters and situations, but whereas one ends up stumbling to the finish line, the other reaches it with head held high. The Mint Theater, which resuscitates forgotten, neglected works, breathes fashionable new life into Ferenc Molnár’s Fashions for Men, which could alternately be called The Haberdashery Around the Corner. Joe Delafield stars as Peter Juhász, the tall, proper owner of a reputable clothing shop catering to a wealthy, annoying clientele. He has such a gentle, forgiving nature that he can’t get angry when one of his employees, Oscar (John Tufts), steals his wife, Adele (Annie Purcell), and they take off with a hefty sum of cash Peter had set aside in an account for her. Peter doesn’t want to go back to his primary backer, the fabulously wealthy, playfully pompous Count (Kurt Rhoads), an older gentleman who has his eyes on Peter’s beautiful young employee Paula (Rachel Napoleon). Meanwhile, another of Peter’s salesmen, Philip (Jeremy Lawrence), watches all the shenanigans with knowing glances. The second act, which takes place in the Count’s extravagant estate, gets bogged down in repetitive slapstick as Peter is determined to protect Paula’s purity, but the first and third acts, set in Daniel Zimmerman’s wonderfully designed haberdashery, are a joy. The cast, dressed in appropriate finery by costumer Martha Hally, is uniformly excellent, with particularly keen turns by Rhoads and Delafield, who is so up-to-snuff playing the absurdly good Peter you’ll want to slap him around to get him to finally face reality and stand up for himself. Director Davis McCallum (London Wall, The Few) keeps it all flowing smoothly in a way that would make Ernst Lubitsch proud. Mint artistic director Jonathan Bank has tweaked Benjamin Glazer’s 1921 translation with the help of Agnes Niemitz and Gábor Lukin, Molnár’s great-grandson; the original English-language version opened on Broadway in December 1922. Molnár might not be a household name, but several of his works are, adapted into such films as Carousel, The Guardsman, The Swan, The Devil, and One, Two, Three.

Dr. Stark (Ned Eisenberg) has quite a surprise for his wife, Belle (Marilyn Matarrese), in Pecadillo revival of ROCKET TO THE MOON (photo by Carol Rosegg)

ROCKET TO THE MOON
Theatre at St. Clement’s
423 West 46th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 28, $75-$95
www.thepeccadillo.com

Another troupe that rediscovers classic works, the Peccadillo Theater Company, has brought back Clifford Odets’s Rocket to the Moon in a solid production that ultimately reveals the play’s severe flaws. One of America’s most important and influential writers, Odets penned such plays as Golden Boy, The Big Knife, Awake and Sing! and The Country Girl and such films as None but the Lonely Heart, Humoresque, and Sweet Smell of Success. In Rocket to the Moon, which debuted on Broadway in 1938 with Luther Adler, Morris Carnovsky, Leif Erickson, and Sanford Meisner, Odets tells the sad-sack story of Dr. Ben Stark (Ned Eisenberg), a mensch of a dentist with a shrewish, overbearing wife, Belle (Marilyn Matarrese), who is none too thrilled with the sexy new office girl, nineteen-year-old Cleo Singer (Katie McClellan). Belle is also not happy that her husband is letting his fellow dentist, dour tenant Phil Cooper (Larry Bull), fall well behind on his rent. Despite their financial problems, Belle does not want Ben to accept a generous offer from her dapper, estranged father, Mr. Prince (Jonathan Hadary), to set him up in a fancier office in a better location and with more modern technology. At the same time, Ben is none too thrilled that the fabulously wealthy, playfully pompous Mr. Prince has his eyes on Cleo, as does one of Ben’s patients, a hotshot swinger named Willy Wax (Lou Liberatore) who is zeroing in on her as his next conquest. Meanwhile, Ben’s podiatrist neighbor, Frenchy (Michael Keyloun), watches all the shenanigans, sharing his perverse opinion seemingly without a care in the world. The cast is uniformly excellent, with particularly fine turns by Bull, McClellan, and Odets veteran Eisenberg, who excels as the infuriatingly indecisive Ben — getting Ben to stand up for himself is like pulling teeth. Precisely directed by Dan Wackerman (Ten Chimneys, The Man Who Came to Dinner), Rocket to the Moon soars in the first act, but the second act gets bogged down in a dreary battle between Mr. Prince and Dr. Stark over Cleo that is dated, misogynistic, and just plain tiresome. Odets tries too hard to make grand statements about family and responsibility in an America that is still rattling from the Depression and soon to get involved in WWII; the play works best when it gets right down to business, delving into the very human need for intimacy, understanding, compassion, and, most of all, love. But that’s precisely what you’ll find, along with a wry sense of humor, at the Mint’s stellar revival of Fashions for Men.

KILL ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT

Nathan Darrow stars as private investigator Ben Farrell in Stolen Chair noir parody (photo by Carrie Leonard)

Nathan Darrow stars as private investigator Ben Farrell in Stolen Chair film noir parody (photo by Carrie Leonard)

Fourth Street Theatre
83 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 8, $25-$45, 7:00 or 8:00
www.stolenchair.org

Stolen Chair, which specializes in creating unique theatrical experiences (The Man Who Laughs, Potion), does it again with the film noir parody Kill Me Like You Mean It, an existential exploration of the very nature of storytelling, keeping its existential tongue in its existential cheek as it mines through the familiar clichés of the rich American genre while also searching for the meaning of existence. Written by company co-artistic director Kiran Rikhye and directed by cofounder Jon Stancato, the show follows private investigator Ben Farrell (Nathan Darrow), a former cop who is hired by Murder Monthly magazine publisher Lydia Forsythe (Natalie Hegg) to find her star writer, Tommy Dickie (David Skeist), who is in the midst of a series of stories about private investigator Bob Darrell, whose cases predict what will happen next to Farrell in real life. However, Dickie doesn’t appear to be missing at all, as Farrell finds him at home, where his bombshell sister, Vivian Ballantine (Sarah Skeist), hires Farrell to investigate Forsythe. “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Tommy says, to which Farrell retorts, “No. Truth is fiction.” Soon Farrell is trying to prevent Forsythe and Dickie from publishing a story in which Darrell dies, thinking that will lead to his own death as well.

PI Ben Farrell (Nathan Darrow) needs to twist a few arms to get information in KILL ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT (photo by Carrie Leonard)

There’s plenty of playful pulp throughout Kill Me Like You Mean It, which features appropriately dark, moody lighting by David Bengali and a jazzy score by Sean Cronin. There are an additional two sets of seats on either side of the stage, like a jury deliberating on the action unfolding in front of them in a courtroom drama while also providing different angles that evoke noir compositions. Various props are stored underneath the higher of the two, most memorably a bathtub, used for a riotous send-up of a memorable scene from Otto Preminger’s Laura; set changes, most prominently an inventive use of moving doors, are made by a pair of mysterious men with flashlights. Darrow, who plays the Underwood bodyguard Edward Meechum on House of Cards, is wonderfully deadpan spitting out absurdist takes on noir dialogue, keeping a straight face as he gets into splendid rat-a-tat-tat conversations. Vivian: “I’d like you to feel safe. Go on and search me.” Farrell: “What do you think I’ll find?” Vivian: “What would you like to find?” Farrell: “What do you think I’d like to find?” Vivian: “I think you’d like to find whatever you’re looking for.” Farrell: “What would you like me to be looking for?” Vivian: “Why don’t you find it and find out.” Stancato adds such other fun touches as running jokes about cigarettes and lighters, face slapping, and hats. The boundaries between fiction, reality, and yet another level of fiction even extend to the program, which is a mock edition of Murder Monthly that comes complete with an installment of Tommy Dickie’s serial and some old-fashioned ads, one of which is for a whiskey that audience members are offered a sample of upon entering the theater. Also in the program is a list of suggested movies to check out, ranging from Chinatown, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and L.A. Confidential to The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and D.O.A., prime viewing indeed. Be sure to arrive a little early to be serenaded by some noir-era crooning.

CULTUREMART 2015

Sara and Reid Farrington go behind the scenes of the making of a classic in CASABLANCABOX (photo by Sara and Reid Farrington)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 4-14, $15
212-352-3101
www.here.org

HERE’s annual winter performance festival, now in its fourteenth year, highlights cutting-edge works-in-progress from a wide-ranging group of artists who are either current or former participants in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), which commissions hybrid presentations in order “to not only grow innovative artistic work, but also [to] give artists the awareness and skills — in areas such as audience relations, budgeting, grantwriting, and touring — they need to continue to grow their careers.” This year features a dozen multidisciplinary workshop performances, beginning March 4-5 with sound designer Christina Campanella and composer Jim Dawson’s Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, a continuous geographic audio installation in which the audience listens in on headphones to a twenty-five-minute loop, and Sara and Reid Farrington’s CasablancaBox, in which the husband-and-wife duo combine live actors and film clips that go behind the scenes of the making of the 1942 movie; Farrington has previously reimagined such films as The Passion of Joan of Arc, Rope, and multiple versions of A Christmas Carol in his unique, mesmerizing style. On March 6-7 at 7:00, Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence explores the American patriot during the last days of his life and the start of his afterlife, with music performed by vocalist Joan La Barbara and the ensemble Ne(x)tworks. On March 7-8 at 8:30, Sean Donovan and Sebastián Calderón Bentin turn to Alain Renais’s Last Year at Marienbad and Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel for Abbadon, in which a social gathering delves into the nature of class structure; Abbadon is on a shared bill with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a piece of dance theater that takes its inspiration from the public access amateur talent television show of the same name.

Hai-Ting Chinn’s SCIENCE FAIR takes viewers on a multimedia operatic journey (photo by Benjamin Heller)

On March 9-10, you can see a double feature of Hai-Ting Chinn’s multimedia opera, Science Fair, with music by Matthew Schickele and live piano by Erika Switzer, and The Emperor and the Queen’s Parisian Weekend, with music by Kamala Sankaram and a libretto by Pete McCabe, directed by HERE cofounder Tim Maner. March 10-11 pairs Matt Marks and Paul Peers’s Mata Hari, an opera-theater piece about the last days of the renowned WWI spy, with Nick Brooke’s Psychic Driving, which immerses the audience in surveillance and CIA brainwashing. From March 12 to 14, Jessica Scott’s Ship of Fools uses music, puppets, and movement to examine particular women throughout history while looking at who is in control of the future; it’s on a shared bill with Robin Frohardt’s Fitzcardboardaldo, a cinematic cardboard tribute to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, along with The Corrugation of Dreams, an homage to Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams, about the making of the Herzog film. CULTUREMART concludes March 13-14 with HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and Robert Lyons’s Idiot, an exploration of Dostoevsky protagonist Prince Myshkin using text, video, and dance. The festival also includes a trio of post-performance talks, “Continue the Conversation,” with “Soundscapes” on March 6 after the 7:00 Lighthouse show, “Variants of Video Integration” on March 8 following the 8:30 show, and “Playing with Operatic Form” on March 10 after the 8:30 show. Tickets for all productions are $15 except for Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, for which admission is $5; a $60 OFF-OFFten Club membership allows you to see all shows for $5 each and also comes with four tickets to be used anytime during the season in addition to four glasses of wine from the café.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: HUNTER GATHERERS

HUNTER GATHERERS runs March 3-28 at Duo theater

Duo Multicultural Arts Center
62 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday- Saturday, March 3-28, $35-$49, 8:00
www.playhousecreatures.org
www.duotheater.org

Winner of the 2007 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award and the 2006 Will Glickman Award, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers is a savage black comedy about a dinner party that begins with an animal sacrifice — and then things really start to get crazy. The hundred-minute show is making its New York City debut March 3-28 in a production by, appropriately enough, the Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company in the East Village. Hunter Gatherers stars Emily Dahlke, Megan O’Leary, Joseph W. Rodriquez, and John Russell and is directed by Eric Tucker, who was named 2014 Director of the Year by the Wall Street Journal for helming Bedlam’s Sense and Sensibility and The Seagull and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s Two Gentlemen of Verona. The San Francisco-based Nachtrieb, who has also penned such works as boom, BOB, and The Totalitarians, says about Hunter Gatherers, “‘What should I be doing with my life’ is a question that consumes everyone in this play with a ferocity. Eventually, they look to their guts for an answer and it’s their primal instincts that ultimately save or destroy them.”

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Hunter Gatherers begins previews March 3 prior to a March 7 opening, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite play or movie about a dinner party to contest@twi-ny.com by Friday, February 27, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

BIG LOVE

Thyona (Stacey Sargeant), Lydia (Rebecca Naomi Jones), and Olympia (Libby Winters) strut their stuff in Tina Landau’s new production of Charles Mee’s BIG LOVE at the Signature (photo by T Charles Erickson)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 15, $25
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
www.charlesmee.org/plays.shtml

The night we went to see the new production of Charles Mee’s 2000 play, Big Love, at the Signature, technical difficulties delayed the start of the show, but it didn’t bother us one bit. Instead, we enjoyed extra time to take in the glorious beauty of Brett J. Banakis’s breathtaking set. The Irene Diamond theater is dazzlingly bright, mainly white and aglow in shimmering colors, with Austin Switser’s projection of a calm blue ocean at the back of the stage and smaller projections of hummingbirds, flowers, and other heartwarming scenes popping up at various places on the walls and floor. Above, dozens and dozens of flower arrangements hang from the ceiling, a heavenly garden in the sky. Meanwhile, romantic music plays, as gentle as the waves lapping gently out at sea. Onstage is a white claw-foot tub and a white door. Eventually the show got under way, as Lydia (Rebecca Naomi Jones) enters, removes her dirty wedding dress, and settles into the bath. She is interrupted by Giuliano (Preston Sadleir), a young man who is somewhat surprised to find a naked woman in the bathroom. Lydia explains that she is part of a contingent of women who have escaped their native Greece, where their fathers had signed a deal to marry them off to their cousins, and they are now seeking asylum in Italy as refugees. Lydia is joined by Olympia (Libby Winters) and Thyona (Stacey Sargeant), while first Giuliano’s grandmother, Bella (Lynn Cohen), shares some thoughts about husbands and sons with the young women, followed by the arrival of Giuliano’s uncle Piero (Christopher Innvar), a wealthy, slick-talking Mediterranean man who is not so sure he wants all of the women staying at his expansive villa; he finally relents, letting them stay for dinner. The three women are very different; Lydia is the most realistic, Olympia is an immature dreamer, and Thyona is the tough one, ready to take on the world if she has to. “The male is a biological accident, an incomplete female,” she says, “the product of a damaged gene, trapped in a twilight zone somewhere between apes and humans, always looking obsessively for some woman.” Lydia responds, “That’s maybe a little bit extreme,” to which Thyona argues, “Any woman, because he thinks if he can make some connection with a woman that will make him a whole human being! But it won’t. It never will.” Just as she is completing her rant, the women’s prospective husbands, Constantine (Ryan-James Hatanaka), Nikos (Bobby Steggert), and Oed (Emmanuel Brown), show up looking for their brides, and all hell is about to break loose.

Three cousins fly in from Greece, having followed their prospective brides to an Italian seaside villa in Charles Mee’s Aeschylus update (photo by T Charles Erickson)

Big Love is a contemporary restructuring of Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Maidens, one of the oldest known plays and the only existing section of the Danaid Tetralogy by the Father of Tragedy. Mee, whose other classicist works include Iphigenia 2.0, Trojan Women 2.0, and Orestes 2.0 and who has cited German dance-theater guru Pina Bausch as a major influence, throws just about everything he possibly can at this tale of fifty brides-to-be being chased by fifty determined cousins, from cake and tomatoes to Tiffany boxes and the heads of Ken and Barbie dolls. The potentially kissing cousins serve as their own Greek chorus, occasionally breaking out into song, a conceit that works best the first time around, when Lydia, Olympia, and Thyona suddenly grab microphones and, under hot spotlights, deliver a rousing rendition of the recently deceased Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” The play is directed with a controlled abandon by frequent Mee collaborator Tina Landau (A Civil War Christmas, Old Hats), who holds nothing back in this kitchen-sink production where anything can happen. The uniformly solid cast, sporting Anita Yavich’s delightful costumes, also includes Piero’s house guests Eleanor (Ellen Harvey) and Leo (Nathaniel Stampley), who are excited by all the festivities, but it’s Jones, Winters, and Sargeant who clearly command the center of attention. Big Love, which is part of Signature’s Legacy Program — Mee was the theater’s 2007-8 playwright-in-residence — doesn’t always hit its ambitious targets, but it’s an awful lot of fun, taking advantage of every little detail it can, from the way Oed, Constantine, and Nikos enter in helicopters to the absurdist use of a movable door to the appearance of a trampoline for no apparent reason. But what, no cake for the audience?