(Above: Katie Bucker as Brodie and Madeleine Allard-Duggan as her girlfriend visit the gorilla habitat)

By Bella Poynton

Madeleine George’s quiet, peculiar, and deeply thought-provoking play, Precious Little, produced by Brazen Faced Varlets, plays for one more weekend at the Compass Performing Arts Center, and I strongly suggest making the trip to see it.

It is not often that we encounter a play quite like this one. There is no spectacle here, no flashy tech or design aspects demanding our attention. Instead, George offers something far more delicate: a slightly strange meditation on memory, language and what it means to live with uncertainty.

At the center of the play is Brodie, a linguist navigating a geriatric pregnancy at forty-two. Newcomer Katie Buckler gives a confident, grounded performance that captures both Brodie’s intellectual prowess and emotional vulnerability.

Brodie explains to her genetic counselor that she spent the first half of her life building a career. The tenure clock, the grant proposals, the publications, the institutional instability… by the time financial and emotional security arrived, it was nearly too late for a baby. But biology does not care about the complexities of the ivory tower.

When Brodie then receives troubling news about the baby she is carrying, she’s at a loss for who to turn to for support. Her problem isn’t only medical, but existential as well.

What’s striking about George’s script is the sheer lack of support Brodie has. Each character is essentially floating around the others, but never quite connecting. Yet, this structural choice is intentional, supported in the design work with Stefanie Warnick’s haunting and empty soundscape.

Eventually, Brodie reaches out to Dre, her graduate student and lover, played with boldness and specificity by Madeline Allard-Dugan. Their relationship is fraught from the start. Shrouded in secrecy and inappropriate power dynamics, we know it cannot last.

Allard-Dugan plays Dre with a complicated blend of affection and resentment. When Brodie seeks comfort, Dre’s response is jarringly callous. “Scrap this one and start from scratch!” she says, in reference to Brodie’s baby. I was momentarily stunned, but Dre herself has been taken advantage of; can we really blame her? There’s no villain here, just flawed people colliding in moments of crisis.

Allard-Dugan also navigates a remarkable range of additional roles: genetic counselor Rhiannon, Gloria, an ultrasound technician, Evelyn, a woman suspicious of Brodie’s interviews with her grandmother, and a dozen or so zoo visitors. Each character is distinct in demeanor, vocal rhythm, and energy. It is a technically demanding performance, and Allard-Dugan meets it with gusto and heart. 

Brodie’s most unexpected connection, however, emerges at the zoo. Fascinated by language but suddenly aware of its limitations, Brodie has an unexpected connection with a gorilla that does not rely on words. The Ape, beautifully and subtly embodied by Kate Olena, becomes the emotional counterweight to Brodie’s spiraling mind. The Ape lives in the present. She does not catastrophize. She does not speculate about what might be. She does not weigh her options. In their wordless encounters, Brodie is confronted with an alternative mode of being.

Olena plays the Ape with remarkable restraint.

She also plays Cleva, the elderly speaker of a nearly eradicated fictional language, and Dorothy, the poised supervisor at the genetics clinic. The distinctions among these three characters are extraordinary. Cleva’s warmth and sweetness stand in stark contrast to Dorothy’s calm stoicism and the Ape’s grounded physicality. Each character feels fully realized and is a joy to watch.

Moreover, the production’s use of puppetry is also worth noting. Bodie’s baby, seen during a stylized  ultrasound moment, is represented with a puppet controlled by Olena. It is an unconventional choice, but an effective one.

In his well-known essay, “The Actor and the Über-Marionette” (1908), Edward Gordon Craig tells us that puppets can convey a “living spirit” and a “death-like beauty” beyond the expressiveness of a human performer. Here, the puppet’s presence was both expressive and unexpectedly moving for something used so sparingly.  

Brazen-Faced Varlets’ artistic director, Stefanie Warnick, directs the haunting tale with patience and trust in the text. She doesn’t rush the moments, honoring the play’s contemplative tone and allowing George’s language to breathe.

Heather Fangsrud’s set design is just as intentional. The backdrop’s imagery suggests an audio-level meter, measuring the rise and fall of speech, and what appears to be an umbilical cord. The two images intersect and blend into one another, reminiscent of the fractured threads of Brodie’s life. It is a subtle metaphor, but once you see it, you cannot unsee it. It invites the audience to consider the fragmentation in their own lives, and whether the pieces can ever be united.

Ultimately, this is a play about yearning for connection. Yet George does not offer that connection very easily. Brodie’s crisis is not resolved with a tidy moral or transparent message. Instead, the play invites us to sit in the uncertain present, contemplating the paths we’ve nurtured, the ones we neglect, the languages we preserve, and the ones we allow to disappear. After all, we cannot follow every road presented to us. Sometimes, we must live with the uncertainty of the choices we have already made.

It is a quiet piece. But it lingers.