Storyline & Characters

STORYLINE:

Two wealthy families vie for the hand of the desirable Doctor Nikolakis, who, although over thirty, is still under the influence of his mother. The Greek Island of Kasos was a matriarchal society, and at the end of nineteenth century, property was owned by the women and passed from mother to first daughter often by means of a dowry. If a girl did not get a dowry, as was the case with younger daughters, she did not get a husband.

According to the custom, the man would not propose to the woman. Instead, male relations of the perspective bride would visit the groom on a moonless night, wearing socks of different colors to bring good luck. After some beating about the bush, they would ask the man if he would accept their daughter's hand. They would already have a good indication that he would or they would not ask, since they would do anything to avoid being shamed.

"Only a madman would decline to have her", Dr. Nikolakis says to the Phillipides whose daughter he has known and admired since they were children. But that was before he knew at the very same moment, in another custom-dominated conversation, his mother was accepting a proposal from another family on his behalf.

"The Yeroyioryis' were here just a half hour ago", his mother explains to the dumbfounded Dr. Nikolakis. "Oh, they did say, just as a formality, they would like to hear it from you. You are over thirty now, and I wouldn't dream of influencing you so tomorrow you can tell them you accept."

The Doctor wriggles like an insect on a pin. "Will he get free?" is the question to be answered by the whirlwind second act. "But you're not trying to get free," says his sister Eloula, "You're trying to get married." "Married? Yes. But to which one?" the Doctor replies, "I'm engaged to both of them."

In the meantime, looming ahead is the final custom, the cruelest of all. On the Monday before the first Tuesday of Lent, those who expected to be married but were disappointed, will wake to find a giant paper padlock fasten to their door, signifying that their time for marriage is sealed away.

Who will get the padlock?

CHARACTERS:

THE DOCTOR: “The almond of his mother’s eye is well educated, good-looking, smooth and honey-tongued and can talk his way out of anything. The challenge for him is to give up his manipulative skill, which he has in spades, to be able to give himself up to love.

THE MOTHER: A Greek woman in her fifties, dressed in black, her character is revealed in her first speech. “Do I know my lines, they’re written in my flesh.” A widow who has brought up three children, like all Greek widows of the late 19th century, she has lived her life in isolation, cut off from the tree of social life but determined that her eldest son, the Doctor, and her son’s brilliant marriage, will bring her back into the sun.

ELOULA: The Doctor’s sister, encourages her brothers to marry, believing that she cannot marry herself because she is too much needed at home. Another reason is she doesn’t have a dowry. In one of the score’s most tuneful ballads, she sounds the call for personal freedom against the force of social convention: “I believe in love.” Attractive, self-effacing, caring for the welfare of the others in her family, she has an appealing nature and is too intelligent to be a dupe. That is why the irony of her fate is so poignant, bringing the first act to its shocking conclusion.

The Narrator, Uncle George, tells the BRIDES, “You two young ladies are the heroines, but you are not the sort of heroines we would expect to find in North America these days. Neither of you will say a word.” At the time the play was written, he explains, no one cared what young women thought or wanted, so there was no reason for them to say anything.

But near the end of the play, one of the brides, Fifika, breaks out of her enforced silence to utter such lines that seem to be spoken from the anguish of her heart. Her emotion in turn causes the Doctor to begin to lose control and for the first time give way to real passion. What happens after that is testimony to the inexorable engine of fate, hurtling downhill with its Greek inevitability.