Precious Little: A Play with a Lot to Say
The theme that holds together Madeleine George’s somewhat disparate plot in Precious Little is language. Brodie the protagonist, a linguist beautifully played by Lee Mikeska, has devoted her life to finding and preserving disappearing languages. When the play opens she is forty-two and realizes that in the process of building her academic career has let the personal side of her life slip. An unmarried lesbian who is feeling middle age encroaching, she made the decision to be artificially inseminated. Because of her age she undergoes amniocentesis to determine if all is right with her pregnancy. The results point toward retardation but are inconclusive. Part of the play revolves around Brodie reaching the decision to keep the baby, although she does not discuss abortion. …