Personal Theatrical Musings on Performances

Monday, February 7, 2011

"The Big Meal" at American Theater Company on 2/7/11 in Chicago, IL


In "The Big Meal," a new play by Dan LeFranc receiving its world premier at the very exuberant American Theater Company, a father tells his daughter who is about to get married that "you will encounter storms and hail but eventually it will pass." The play bills itself as 75 scenes about a family in 75 minutes, fragmented in a way that reflects fragmented life in a contemporary society. I don't know about that: there are a lot of scenes indeed and there is tension in the family but the play itself is linear and the family is no more fragmented than any of the memorable families in American theater. Instead, it's about a couple, tracking them from the moment they meet in their youth to the end of their lives. The play follows their life together, through storms, through hail, but that all passes.

At first, the scenes are short and move quickly, requiring intensive acting if it's going to inspire pathos. Peggy Roeder, who plays the mother-in-law of the woman at the center of the story and then the woman herself, is fantastic. She has the acting chops to pull that off. As the play develops, scenes lengthen, which seems necessary to create the depth the play needs as it shifts from comedy to drama. Phillip Earl Johnson plays partner to Peggy Roeder and his performance is centered and varied.

On opening night the acting wasn't even but it was often excellent. The best acting was spotlighted during moments when death is announced. The play is centered around meals at the dinner table(s), as the title suggests, and the drinking takes place out of empty glasses but the arrival of real food means death for the character who gets to eat the actual meal. These moments are the most beautiful in the play. As the final meal is served, it is served to the husband and Peggy Roeder's repetition of "Sam. Sam. Sam." signals that despite the storms and hail that we've witnessed in their marriage, at the end of the marriage they had weathered the storm.