{"id":569,"date":"2020-06-07T15:38:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T15:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/?p=569"},"modified":"2022-02-05T13:17:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T13:17:24","slug":"have-you-ever-had-an-intention-the-postmodern-condition-and-the-failure-of-epiphany-in-michael-john-lachiusas-little-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/have-you-ever-had-an-intention-the-postmodern-condition-and-the-failure-of-epiphany-in-michael-john-lachiusas-little-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHave you ever had an intention?\u201d: The Postmodern Condition and the Failure of Epiphany in Michael John LaChiusa\u2019s Little Fish<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mara Davis<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Michael John LaChiusa\u2019s 2003 musical Little Fish<\/font> is a work that engages with the conditions of living in the postmodern age. This article analyses how LaChiusa manipulates the formal properties of the musical in order to express the disconnection and fragmentation of postmodern living. It examines the impact of this on personal relationships, as Little Fish<\/font> is full of unsatisfying encounters between subjects. Finally, it considers its treatment of epiphany. The musical excels at the presentation of triumphant epiphanic moments. Little Fish<\/font>, however, subverts epiphany at almost every turn. Ultimately, it is perhaps a twenty-first-century successor to Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Company: a study of urban existence in these times.
Keywords<\/strong>: Little Fish<\/font>, Michael John LaChiusa, Deborah Eisenberg, Jennifer Laura Thompson, David Harvey, Sondheim\u2019s Company<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael John LaChiusa\u2019s 2003 musical Little Fish <\/em>is a work that engages with the conditions of living in the postmodern age. The narrative follows Charlotte, a thirty-something short-story writer living in New York, who is in the grips of an existential crisis, paralysed by uncertainty and lack of motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article analyses how LaChiusa manipulates the formal properties of the musical in order to express the disconnection and fragmentation of postmodern living. It examines the impact of this on personal relationships, as Little Fish <\/em>is full of unsatisfying encounters between subjects. It also considers its treatment of epiphany. The musical excels at the presentation of triumphant epiphanic moments, whereby a character bursts into song as they solve their problem. Little Fish<\/em>, however, subverts epiphany at almost every turn. When it does finally arrive, it deliberately fails to deliver a triumphant catharsis for either the audience or the protagonist. Ultimately, Little Fish <\/em>is perhaps a twenty-first-century successor to Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Company<\/em>: a study of urban existence in these times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Michael John LaChiusa. Photo: Monica Simeos<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Michael John LaChiusa was born in New York in 1962. He is a composer, lyricist and librettist who writes musical theatre, opera and chamber music. He has been nominated for five Tony Awards over the course of his career and has produced musicals based on a wide variety of source material: plays, novels, poetry, short stories and historical events. His musical Little Fish <\/em>is adapted from two stories in Deborah Eisenberg\u2019s 1987 short story collection, Transactions in a Foreign Currency<\/em>: \u201cFlotsam\u201d and \u201cDays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Deborah Eisenberg. Photo: courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Eisenberg is an American writer primarily known for her short fiction. In her collection, the two stories selected by LaChiusa are not sequential, but rather separated by three other discrete stories. LaChiusa had originally planned to set the stories as two separate shows, but found it difficult to make it work, and so with Eisenberg\u2019s blessing, he combined the two (Shewey). On this front, the final product is remarkably successful. Eisenberg\u2019s stories are well-fused in Little Fish, <\/em>which dips in and out of both quite seamlessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The production opened at Second Stage, an Off-Broadway theatre in New York City, on 21 January 2003, directed and choreographed by Graciela Daniele. That same year, the Dramatists Play Service published the libretto, and in 2008, a live cast recording of the Los Angeles-based Blank Theatre Company\u2019s production was released by Ghostlight Records. The recording is also available on Spotify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work follows the solipsistic protagonist Charlotte, a thirty-something short-story writer living in New York at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In name and occupation, she is drawn from Eisenberg\u2019s \u201cFlotsam.\u201d Charlotte is without direction, suffering a profound existential crisis. The crisis is seemingly sparked by her decision to quit smoking, and it is at this point in her life that we encounter her. So severe is Charlotte\u2019s malaise that it has rendered her unable to function, to decide something as simple as whether she wants to eat lunch. Throughout the work, Charlotte searches for meaning in a plethora of ways. She tries to find it through relationships with lovers, friends and strangers, by going on vacation, taking up swimming, taking up running, amongst other things. Eventually, she comes to the realisation that she has been looking for something more than what there is, and that she needs to find peace in a life centred around habit and routine. For Charlotte, it proves more productive to accept she is just a little fish (as the metaphor goes) than continuing to try and fail to be a big one. As her friend Marco sings one point, \u201cwe\u2019re only little fish, it\u2019s safer that we swim in schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The production was not well-received by critics, and it played only 29 performances before it closed. Ben Brantley, reviewing the show for The New York Times<\/em>,wrote that Charlotte was a \u201cblack hole of a character,\u201d that the supporting characters were \u201cquickly sketched types than full-fleshed\u201d and that by about halfway through, the show \u201cstarts to lose its shapely, sharp-edged contours and turn into a sentimental, well, blob\u201d: a reference to a scene in which her vindictive, unfeeling ex-boyfriend Robert describes Charlotte as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LaChiusa\u2019s work has often garnered this kind of criticism. Nathan Hurwitz has described his oeuvre as \u201cwidely eclectic,\u201d and observes that he has been \u201caccused of being cerebral to the point of being aloof\u201d (A History<\/em> 217\u201318). LaChiusa does not shy away from challenging audiences and been a prominent critic of \u201cfaux-<\/em>Broadway,\u201d a term he coined to describe what he sees as the formulaic, conservative offerings of the early twenty-first century that provide \u201cno challenge, no confrontation, no art\u201d (\u201cThe Great Gray Way\u201d 33). He is innovative with his use of form and \u201ctends towards the specialized and quirky\u201d (Suskin) when it comes to subject matter. Moreover, as noted by Green, LaChiusa \u201cdoesn’t always structure and signboard the audience\u2019s experiences with recognizable song forms and genre clues\u201d (A6). Specifically, in relation to Little Fish, <\/em>Hurwitz avers that LaChiusa\u2019s \u201cadamant refusal to consider traditional forms\u201d (Songwriters<\/em> n. pag.) in the showultimately detracts from its success. However, to quote Stephen Sondheim\u2019s oft-referenced dictum, \u201ccontent dictates form,\u201d in taking up the themes of Eisenberg\u2019s stories, LaChiusa is responding to source material for which the \u201ctraditional forms\u201d associated with the musical are not well-suited to the postmodernist aesthetics of Eisenberg\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories in Transactions in a Foreign Currency <\/em>evoke the \u201csense of diminishing control, loss of individual autonomy and generalized helplessness\u201d that Charles Newman described as ubiquitous in postmodern literature. The stories form part of an aesthetic movement that seeks to depict \u201cthe flattest possible characters in the flattest possible landscapes rendered in the flattest possible diction\u201d (qtd. in Harvey 58). Such features do not naturally lend themselves to musical adaptation. This article argues that the reactions to Little Fish <\/em>are evidence of the perceived disjuncture between postmodernist concerns and the structure and function of the musical. It offers an alternate reading whereby many of the perceived flaws of the work can be read in terms of postmodernist tendencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Time-Space Compression<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

David Harvey argues that the postmodern era has been an \u201cintense phase of time-space compression\u201d (284), whereby the rapid development of new technologies and modes of production has precipitated extraordinary changes in the human relationship to space and time. Little Fish <\/em>reflects this by eschewing the book-musical format, whereby songs are interspersed within a linear narrative, in favour of \u201cvignettes that flicker and flash, zooming back and forth in time,\u201d as Don Shewey describes. Time is synchronic rather than diachronic. The setting of the brief vignettes changes frequently\u2014locales include a dress shop, a nightclub, an art gallery, a movie theatre, a swimming pool and many more\u2014and the stage directions frequently adopt words like \u201cvanish\u201d or \u201cdisappear,\u201d which evocatively conjure the way that the scene transitions should feel like they occur. People similarly appear and disappear without fanfare or warning. It is often difficult to distinguish between the present and the past, as there are few clear scene divisions or other devices that demarcate time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Occasionally, we are given a clue through a lyric, or an aside to the audience, but, for the most part, specificity is absent. There is no exposition to speak off. Charlotte wakes; makes a pronouncement about how difficult it is to quit smoking; and the opening number ensues. These elements combined assist to capture the speed of postmodern living and a society obsessed with \u201cthe virtues of instantaneity\u201d (Harvey 286).  As the company sing in the opening number, \u201cTime means nothing, days get lost. Time means nothing, Days go by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audio 1<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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