FringeNYC 2013: Very Little
A sweltering night in the Everglades. 1863. A fatal gunshot claims an unexpected victim, leaving a troop of Union soldiers more lost than ever. The War of the States becomes an inner war of will, belief, and survival.
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Review by Kimberly Wadsworth · August 16, 2013
Very Little is very short. Not “only one minute” short – it’s just over a half hour – but it’s still fairly brief.
Set during the Civil War, John D’Amico’s script means to avoid the big “name” battles, and instead deals with the sort of minor incident from any war’s fringes, where the action is little and the soldiers have that much more time to brood. In this case, a corporal from New York’s National Guard, stationed in the Everglades, accidentally shoots a Cherokee woman while on night watch. The bulk of the play concerns the fallout and aftermath from his act – the camp nurse tends to the woman on her deathbed, but the squad’s leader, convinced the woman was a spy, charges another of the soldiers to get a confession out of her. Meanwhile, the corporal who shot the woman agonizes over his act, and two privates spin tall tales to entertain themselves while they dig the woman’s grave.
It’s a modest story, but the play’s brevity ultimately proved frustrating. We get tantalizing glimpses into the characters – Corporal Cooper (Mike Mizwicki), the soldier tending to the dying woman, Talisa (Andrea Aguilera), instead falls into talk about religion, speaking longingly about his youth in a Shaker community – and of the woman he left it for. Private Scott (Vinny Pizzimenti) has such a vivid imagination telling his pirate story that his partner in gravedigging, Private Hay (Peter Collins) ends up doing all the work. Captain Adams (Erik LaPointe) is dead-set on army efficiency, but is also secretly writing his memoirs, hinting that he may be more set on personal glory. But aside from these character sketches, we get little else.
There is one bit of confusing conflict – Nurse Mills (Lily Zahn) has pressed the Captain into writing an appeal to the Union post at St. Augustine for more supplies, and Corporal Lighter (Jeremy Boros) volunteers to deliver it as expiation for having shot Talisa. Both Captain Adams and Corporal Lighter regard this as a dangerous mission, but I wasn’t exactly clear where the danger was, for in the very first scene the soldiers are discussing just how far from the front they are and just how little action they’re likely to see.
The story driving Very Little wasn’t ever going to make for a long play, nor should it. But surely we could have had at least another five minutes to fill the story out a bit more.
Preview: Interviews with Artists from Very Little
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