Big Giant Love is One Giant Gift

Just on the western collar of Chicago, there’s a beautiful exercise in bravery being re-enacted just about every weekend this month.  The  one woman show, Big Giant Love, is part of a series the Madison Street Theatre in Oak Park is mounting this season showcasing the “power of one”.

In these doubting quivery times, when so many question whether their individual efforts bear any consequence, the power of one has the scent of a deceptive premise.  How appropriate that, in this case, the reality of that power comes in the form of a mother.

In many ways, Maureen Muldoon probably considers herself just a regular mom.  Four kids and a husband living in the suburbs doing her family thing.  But what Ms. Muldoon has that sets her apart from torrents of moms are some exceptional skills.  A professional actress and a natural storyteller, she’s capable of creating a very personal story that opens up and becomes an ongoing harrowing adventure with still unknown endings.  She’s a mom whose 14-year-old, also very smart and very brave, has announced through a sign on her bedroom door that she is actually he.

In less capable hands, this odyssey in staged spoken word could easily spell disaster. It could slide into cliché or become mired in sentimentality.  Here it bristles with intellect, embraces the unknown, finds electric joy in humor and trusts the future.  It’s also like a fist sheathed in velvet pounding on iron demanding action.

Muldoon is much too smart to dwell entirely on the sexual evolution of her child.  She takes her time to let you know who she is first by disclosing in vignettes how her roots shaped her.  Raised resolutely Catholic and hailing from a family that sings its way through choppy seas, you begin to discern how she became so gifted, so gutsy and willing to go there for the right reason.

This performance is as much about how the story is told as it is about the story it tells.  Each is dependent on the other. And reflection makes them even more enchanting together.

Muldoon may have a point that the east and west coasts offer more accommodating soil to nurture those whose growth as a person does not conform to convention.  But, as 14-year-old Ulysses learned in the recently released film Saturday Church discovers, parts of Brooklyn might as well be in the Bible Belt for some kids confronting the irrevocability of their sexuality.  Which suggests that the soil within the family is ultimately the most crucial.

In her “attempt to tell the truth about love”, Ms. Muldoon gave everyone present one giant gift. A gift that came with a directive: to use your voice.

Big Giant Love

August 31, 2018

September 2 – 7 – 9

September 14 – 15^th

September 21 -23

Madison Street Theatre

1010 Madison St.

Oak Park, IL  60302

708-406-2491

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