Little Fish

About the show

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. 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."