The Fever

by Wallace Shawn
directed by Darragh McKeon

"...as kinetic a production as you could hope for" -
- Irish Theatre Magazine

Picture this: A tsunami ravaged land. In the midst of all the devastation, two bikini-clad tourists continue their holiday in the sun, oblivious to the rubble and destruction of an entire country that lies in ruin around them.

It was images like these that inspired the American playwright Wallace Shawn to write his Obie award-winning play The Fever, which goes on tour in a new Irish production in May 2005. In 1990 the well-known American playwright and actor Wallace Shawn wrote his play The Fever in response to underhanded intervention by the American government in Latin America. In the play, an affluent, American man, suffering from a sense of disillusionment with his own world, is travelling to a poor, third-world country when he falls deliriously ill and collapses in a hotel bathroom. In the midst of his feverishness, he begins to understand the unfair balance of wealth and power in the world. What is more, he begins to realise that despite his liberal-mindedness and his desire to do good, he is complicit in all of this global inequality: that his lifestyle contributes to this injustice. What he then witnesses as he travels through poor countries changes the way he sees his own life.

Set in the grimy bathroom of a seedy hotel, The Fever is an intimate monologue which reveals a nameless "first world" traveler filled with existential dread while seeking refuge in a hotel in the midst of a third world, war-torn country. This privileged traveler, with his baggage of affluence, stands in stark contrast to his desperate and impoverished surroundings. He is alone, unwell and nauseous; grappling with the physical pain that increases as his awareness expands. All the while, he fondly reminisces on past guilty pleasures that this third world and its people will never know. The play imagines dreams of comfort, images of physical and economic violence, accusations of indifference, and cold-blooded arguments in favor of oppression. The central question of the play: what, if anything, is a morally consistent way to live in the world as it is? Although the play was written fifteen years ago it is just as relevant today, with American and other western powers intervening in the Middle East and other developing world countries. The questions the play raises about morality, equality, and the distribution of power are as valid - if not more valid - in light of more recent global events as they were in 1990.

In this Irish production by Mangiare Theatre Company the play was directed by Daragh Mc Keon, one of the young directors in Rough Magic Theatre Company's SEEDS programme and features Jaimie Carswell. Lighting design was by Nick McCall with sound design by Joe Hunt.

The Fever opened in The Factory Performance Space, Sligo, and went on to tour Ireland.

(photo: Jaimie Carswell as The Traveler)

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