''Little Fish'' is a

musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the narr ...

with music, lyrics, and book by

Michael John LaChiusa Michael John LaChiusa (born July 24, 1962) is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for musically esoteric shows such as '' Hello Again'', ''Marie Christine'', '' The Wild Party'', and ''See Wha ...

. The musical is suggested by two short stories by

Deborah Eisenberg Deborah Eisenberg (born November 20, 1945) is an American short story writer, actress and teacher. She is a professor of writing at Columbia University. Early life Eisenberg was born in Winnetka, Illinois. Her family is Jewish. She grew up in su ...

, ''Days'' and ''Flotsam''. It concerns a group of friends living in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, one of whom, Charlotte, decides to stop smoking and then swims to compensate for the lack of nicotine. LaChiusa has said that he sees ''Little Fish'' as a "parable of sorts" for New York after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

.Brantley, Be
''New York Times'' review of "Little Fish"
'The New York Times'', February 14, 2003

Production history

The musical premiered

off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...

at the

Second Stage Theatre Second Stage Theater is a theater company founded in 1979 by Robyn Goodman and Carole Rothman and located in Manhattan, New York City. It produces both new plays and revivals of contemporary American plays by new playwrights and established wri ...

in New York City on February 13, 2003, and closed on March 9, 2003. Directed and choreographed by

Graciela Daniele Graciela Daniele (born December 8, 1939) is an Argentine-American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director. Biography Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Raúl Daniele and Rosa del Carmen Almoina. After her parents divorced, her mother got a jo ...

, it starred

Jennifer Laura Thompson Jennifer Laura Thompson (born December 5, 1969) is an American actress and singer, best known for her theatrical performances. She originated the role of Cynthia Murphy in the Tony Award-winning musical, ''Dear Evan Hansen'', and received a Tony ...

in the lead role of Charlotte and featured

Hugh Panaro Hugh Panaro (born February 19, 1964) is an American actor and singer known for his work on Broadway. Early life Panaro was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and resided in the East Oak Lane section of the city with his family. As a schoolchild, ...

as Robert,

Lea DeLaria Lea DeLaria (born May 23, 1958) is an American comedian, actress, and jazz singer. DeLaria is credited with being the first openly gay comic to appear on American television with her 1993 appearance on ''The Arsenio Hall Show''. She is best kno ...

as Cinder, and

Jesse Tyler Ferguson Jesse Tyler Ferguson (born October 22, 1975) is an American actor. From 2009 to 2020, he portrayed Mitchell Pritchett on the sitcom ''Modern Family'', for which he earned five consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding ...

as Marco. During the run educational workshops were run by Tracy Bersley.

Alice Ripley Alice Ripley (born December 14, 1963) is an American actress, singer, songwriter and mixed media artist. She is known, in particular, for her various roles on Broadway in musicals, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Next to Normal'' (2009 To ...

starred, with

Gregory Jbara Gregory Jbara (; born September 28, 1961) is an American film, television, and stage actor, and a singer. Early life and education Jbara was born in Nankin Township (now Westland), Michigan, the son of an advertising office manager and an insura ...

and

Chad Kimball Chad Kimball (born September 2, 1976) is an American stage actor known for roles in musical theatre, especially Huey Calhoun in the Broadway musical ''Memphis'' and Milky White in the 2002 Broadway revival of ''Into the Woods''. Early life and ca ...

, in a production running from October 9, 2007, to November 18, 2007, at The Blank Theatre,

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

, California. The European premiere was at the Finborough Theatre, London, from October 27, 2009, through November 21. The production was produced by JQ Productions and directed by Adam Lenson, with the cast featuring Ashley Campbell, Michael Cantwell, Katie Foster-Barnes, Nick Holder, Alana Maria,

Laura Pitt-Pulford Laura Pitt-Pulford is a British actress, best known for her work in musical theatre and for playing Carol Butler in ''Emmerdale''. Early life Pitt-Pulford grew up in Rugby, joined a local youth operatic group at age 12, and trained in drama at ...

, Lee William- Davis and Julia Worsley.

Synopsis

In the present time, Charlotte, in her early 30s, lives in New York and is a short-story writer. She has given up smoking cigarettes, but without them she sees herself clearly, and believes that it is not an attractive picture. She is frightened by her new-found reality, thus her friends Marco and Kathy suggest various activities, such as collecting dolls or a new drug. However, she opts for what is presumably the least silly; swimming. Charlotte thinks back to 1993, when she lived in Buffalo with her lover Robert, in his 40s, and she studied English Literature with him. She reflects on her childhood heroine, Anne Frank, who warns her about flotsam: emotional "debris" that blocks the flow of life. As Charlotte sees that she has been addicted not only to cigarettes but "fleeing", she is able to connect with her friends and her writing.

Concept

Don Shewey noted that the musical "departs from any kind of traditional book musical structure. Charlotte's tale emerges in vignettes that flicker and flash, zooming back and forth in time, held together by a narrative thread as tenuous as her nonsmoking sanity." Further, the music is "eclectic" and includes "Latin, jazz, rock, there's pure urban noise."

Songs

*"Days" - Charlotte, Company *"Robert" - Charlotte *"It's A Sign" - Cinder *"The Pool (Part 1)" - Charlotte, Company *"Lockerroom (Part 1)" *"Winter Is Here/The Pool (Part 2)" - Charlotte *"Short Story" - Robert, Lifeguards *"Perfect" - Kathy *"John Paul/Disco" - Charlotte, Kathy *"He" - Robert, Men *"Cigarette Dream" - Charlotte, Company *"Flotsam" - Anne *"Lockerroom 2" *"I Ran" - Marco *"The Track (Part 1)" *"Mr. Bunder/By The Way" - Mr. Bunder *"Remember Me" - Kathy *"Anne" - Young Girl *"Little Fish" - Marco *"Poor Charlotte" - Cinder *"The Track (Part 2)" *"Flotsam" Reprise *"Simple Creature" - Charlotte *"Gallery/Perfect" Reprise *"In Two's and Three's" - Charlotte, Company

Response

Both Daniele and LaChiusa said Charlotte's struggle to quit smoking is "a metaphor for the crises that force people to reconsider who they are and what is important. Mr. LaChiusa said the musical was his oblique response to Sept. 11: 'After that happened, nobody was thinking about how to get rich and famous. You wanted to be around the people you love.' "... LaChiusa went on to add that " 'But after you've been here ew Yorka while, you realize that you don't always have to swim upstream and battle the elements. When you're little fish in a big pond, it's safer to swim in schools.' "Shewey, Don
"Theatre:She Sings the Body Desperate for a Smoke"
'The New York Times'', February 9, 2003

Ben Brantley Benjamin D. Brantley (born October 26, 1954) is an American theater critic, journalist, editor, publisher and writer. He served as the chief theater critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1996 to 2017, and as co-chief theater critic from 2017 to ...

, reviewing for the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', wrote: "About halfway into its intermissionless 90 minutes, ''Little Fish'' starts to lose its shapely, sharp-edged contours and turn into a sentimental, well, blob...Mr. LaChiusa...and Ms. Daniele has done a swell job of fashioning a lively musical about what it means to feel lifeless in contemporary Manhattan...Like many American musical composers under 50, Mr. LaChiusa is an artistic descendant of Mr. Sondheim, and in many ways, ''Little Fish'' can be regarded as a direct, latter-day answer to ''Company.'' Certainly, Riccardo Hernández's terraced, silver-toned set, with its evocation of concrete canyons enhanced by Peggy Eisenhauer's shifting lighting, brings to mind Boris Aronson's fabled designs for the original ''Company.'' And Mr. LaChiusa's Charlotte, like Mr. Sondheim's Bobby, is a wistful, disengaged soul who is surrounded by people who advise her on how to live....The problem, as the show goes on, is that there's an inevitable monotony to Charlotte's interior life." The ''talkinbroadway'' review noted:"It hits all its marks well, but never has quite the "oomph" needed to put it over the top. This may be due to Graciela Daniele's direction and choreography which are fine but unexceptional, never completely communicating in the same urban language that drips from every LaChiusa's score and libretto...LaChiusa can and does impress, time and time again, though perhaps never more effectively than in Charlotte's late-show song, "Simple Creature." It's one of the most stirring and artfully constructed musical scenes to hit the New York stage in years."

Recordings

The cast recording of the Blank Theatre Company's production was released on the

Ghostlight Records Sh-K-Boom Records is an independent record label and producer of recorded and live entertainment, which was founded in 2000 by Kurt Deutsch with the mission of bridging the gap between pop music and theater. In 2004 Sh-K-Boom created their second ...

label on September 9, 2008. with

as Charlotte,

as Marco,

as Mr. Bunder,

Robert Torti Robert Felix Torti (born October 22, 1961) is an American actor. Torti originated the roles of Jesus and Jack in both the New York City and Los Angeles stage productions of ''Reefer Madness''. Earlier in his career, Torti was honored with a To ...

as Robert and

Samantha Shelton Samantha Sky Shelton (born November 15, 1978) is an American actress and singer. Early life Samantha Shelton was born in Los Angeles, California, to director Christopher and Carol Stromme. She has three older sisters: Koren, Erin, and fellow ac ...

as Cinder.Suskin, Steven
"On the Record: Michael John LaChiusa's Little Fish and Rare Recordings of Rodgers"
, playbill.com, September 29, 2008

References

External links

Internet Off-Broadway listing
* ttp://www.curtainup.com/littlefish.html "CurtainUp Review, ''Little Fish'', with song list" {{Michael John LaChiusa 2003 musicals Musicals based on short fiction Off-Broadway musicals Musicals set in New York City Musicals set in New York Musicals set in the 1990s