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Robert Hurwitt
Published 12:05 p.m., Thursday, August 23, 2012
A scientist seeking
clarity encounters disturbing ambiguity in her own amniocentesis
in Madeleine George's scintillating "Precious Little."
If the results confound her, they're almost equally comic, moving
and evocative for the audience in the Shotgun Players West Coast
premiere that opened Monday.
One would think that Brodie,
the woman in question, should be pretty comfortable with ambiguity.
She's a top-notch, high-powered linguist (yes, I know - but don't
try to tell her linguistics isn't a science). But that's in her
work. As a single, expectant 42-year-old lesbian who's finally
achieved academic security, she's looking for clear answers from
medical science.
She's also in the midst
of trying to record a particularly unique dying language. Not
to mention carrying on an affair with a graduate student. And
did I mention the trips to the zoo to visit a peculiarly eloquent,
if silent, gorilla?
That's a lot of ground to
cover, not to mention some heady linguistics and genetics - and
bits of a rather tantalizing ancient language, invented by the
playwright, that bridges Slavic and Finno-Ugric elements. What's
impressive is not just how seamlessly George weaves her materials
together but how economically. As staged by Marissa Wolf and performed
by three terrific women, "Precious" is an 80-minute
little gem that makes a big impression.
Zehra Berkman invests Brodie
with a single-minded drive and ability to compartmentalize that
sells us on the importance of preserving dying languages and on
her belief in herself, even when some of her personal interchanges
lack compassion. That makes her confrontation with genetic uncertainty
all the more fraught, and the stillness of her silences all the
more pregnant.
Nancy Carlin and Rami Margron
play everyone else, delivering a gallery of sharply defined individuals
with the help of Valera Coble's smart costumes. In Margron's case,
that includes a few tour-de-force portraits of entire crowds of
children, parents, lovers and others at the zoo, a wondrous assortment
of voices emerging from a magnetic deadpan.
Carlin is deeply empathetic
as the Ape, whether consuming celery, voicing her thoughts (to
us, not the play's humans) or communing in expressive silence.
She's a whimsical delight as a self-effacing medical counselor,
and deeply touching as Cleva, an elderly native speaker of the
dying language who begins to relive buried pleasures - and horrors
- in Brodie's lab.
"Precious" isn't
a flawless gem. Some elements strain credulity, such as Brodie's
comic ineptness in making a language "informant" comfortable
or display practices that would cost most zoos their accreditation.
But Wolf, Crowded Fire Theater's artistic director, stages her
Shotgun debut with an emotional sensitivity that smoothes any
rough edges and keeps its scenes flowing crisply on Martin Flynn's
intriguingly enigmatic set.
In one of many incisive
surprises George packs into a tight script, Margron - who also
plays Cleva's inarticulate, protective daughter and a comically
cautious medical counselor - embodies a contagious passion for
linguistics in a blend of academic and street lingo as Brodie's
lover. George's acute attention to language makes her characters
distinct and her play sing. Listen carefully and you'll hear an
entire drama in a single soft-spoken "she."
