The Fever

2005-01-07T01:16:59-08:00

This little play, Wallace Shawn's monologue of 112 pages, rocked me when I first encountered it at the Vancouver Fringe Festival sometime in the mid '90s. Perhaps I'll add some commentary later, but for now, try these links: A reading by the author, Wallace Shawn Analysis/Review Review: performance at the fritz theatre, san diego, CA, 19 April 99 which provides the most erudite observation of the meaning underlying this play: "Shawn's theater is not of didacticism, but of dialectic, of disturbing questions posited to provoke us rather than simple answers to soothe." Keep that in mind when reading the reviews by Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly on Amazon.com, which are in stark contrast to those by readers.

Wallace Shawn

The Fever

2004-02-04T06:04:35-08:00

This play can be devestating to a complacent psyche. Delivered as a monologue, the un-named, un-gendered protagonist, wealthy and well-placed, describes the events and conditions leading to an emotional breakdown in "some third-world country where my language isn't spoken." The fever in question is metaphorical, metaphysical and medical. The world whorls all about the deathly ill narrator, in surreal hallucinations, as the bolts holding a comfortable world-view are loosened, then jettisoned. Sickened by the dawning realisation that priviledge exists only where exploitation supports it, the narrative picks apart the conceits, luxuries, baubles and entertainments of the west while connecting them to poverty and death-squads in the third-world battle grounds of economic exploitation--the source of prosperity. It is a descent both rapid and rabid. A long, dark night of the soul, if you will, with only the most daunting of options providing any dawning hope.

Wallace Shawn

Media Things: Stageplay

The Fever

The Fever