It's been an odd day.

It started out badly- I came into work and turned on my computer, only to find out that suddenly I no longer had any icons on it. And a few reboots didn't fix this. Much to my embarrassment, I had to go ask the computer guy for help. Even more embarrassing, I'd recently switched my screen saver on my computer to, well, this. Yes, that's "Fear the Puppet" wallpaper. And the computer dude? Has like, zero sense of humor.

I was terrified that installing the thing might have done something to it, but apparently not. Instead, some website I'd looked at had given IE a virus right in the temporary files and bookmarks, which took three hours to fix and wiped out everything interesting on my machine. So much for all the freaking firewalls they put in here.

The night, however, got better, because I went to see Big Love. I had very little clue what it was about other than a few vague listings about runaway brides, so I figured despite the sappy name, hopefully it wasn't going to make this ex-fiancee totally upset. Instead, it involved many bridal gowns, rapists, cross-dressing, much hurling of people to the flo or, hard, multiple times, and finally, killing! Whee! Kind of a misnomer title, I think...

The plot of it is that fifty Greek sisters were all promised by their father to marry fifty of their American cousins. They aren't thrilled about this, and took off in their wedding dresses to Italy to look for asylum. They wander into the house of this rich Italian dude, Piero, thinking it's a hotel, and end up asking for asylum. He reluctantly gives it and offers to talk with the grooms, who soon show up, but he's uh, not a help at all.

The play focuses on three of the sisters: Lydia, the normal one, Thyona, who's really really really pissed at being forced into marriage (she's first shown pitching wedding china at the wall), and Olympia, who seems to want to be forced into marriage most of the time but vacillates. (I noted that the girl who played this part was last playing Marilyn Monroe. Coincidence? I think not.)

Then there's their grooms: the fellow Olympia's supposed to be with, who doesn't have much personality so I won't say much about him. Thyona is supposed to marry Constantine, who's the worst of the bunch and pretty much outright says he'll rape her. When it comes to Taming of the Shrew, this dude puts Petruchio to shame. No bloody wonder she's freaked and pissed and hates men. And then there's Nikos, the one nice guy of the bunch, who's actually interested in Lydia without forcing her (for the most part).

Eventually, the brides find out they're being forced into marriage anyway, no one will help them. So Thyona comes up with an idea: if we can't stop the wedding let's all kill our grooms on the wedding night. Woo!

And happily, 49 of them do! (Lydia, on the other hand, has a lovely honeymoon night. The one keeper.)

It's a weird, weird play. I didn't know what to make of it for the most part, though it had some great lines and I'm glad I could find them online to add to my quote section on the weblog.

I especially loved this speech by Lydia:

"Sometimes people don�t want to fall in love.

Because when you love someone it�s too late to set conditions.

You can�t say, I�ll love you if you do this, or I�ll love you if you change that, because you can�t help yourself, and then you have to live with whoever it is you fall in love with, however they are, and just put up with the difficulties you�ve made for yourself because true love has no conditions.

That�s why it�s so awful to fall in love."

Lord yes, I relate, relate, relate.

But the best part?

Forty-nine dead grooms.

Mmmm. A bunch of jerky rapist guys who wanted to force women into marriage and deserved to die.

Forty-nine dead grooms.

Say it with me now. Savor it on your tongue: forty-nine dead grooms.

Oh, how I enjoyed it!

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