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Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:00 |
| Meg Hale
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Most people know of the actor Wallace Shawn from his roles on ?®The Cosby Show?∆ and as Vizzini in the film ?®The Princess Bride.?∆ When he is not poisoning masked men and exclaiming ?®Inconceivable!,?∆ he is an acclaimed and award-winning playwright. As the second play at The Stoneleaf Theatre Festival, I saw Shawn??s most recent work ?®The Fever?∆ at The BeBe Theatre.
?®The
Fever?∆ is a one-man show that tells the story of a wealthy traveler in
an unnamed third-world country, in which he does not speak the
language, but fears a revolution is taking place. In a single night, in
which the speaker is stricken ill and lies vomiting on his hotel
bathroom floor, he considers his life and what sort of impression a
single person can make on the world in a lifetime.
The speaker??s subject matter swirls around in an appropriately feverish
style, ranging from his childhood, to his difficulty in finding
comfortable socks, to the status of the poor.
The poor, in fact, become the center-point of the monologue. Though the
speaker is shallow and has no real concept of the suffering in the
world, he sees that there is no hope for the future of the poor people
of the world.
He argues that the upper classes consume too much of the world??s
resources to ever produce enough to provide for the poor as well. His
viewpoint is extremely grim, yet frighteningly realistic. He said that
people donating to charities, raising their children with good moral
values and advocating gradual change is never really going to help the
poor at all.
Okay, so it??s not exactly a laugh a minute, but it is an excellent and
wonderfully written show. The Off-Broadway production of ?®The Fever?∆ by
The Public Theater was awarded the Obie Award for Best New American
Play in 1991. It was even made into a film in 2004, starring Vanessa
Redgrave.
I was especially
impressed with the way that the speaker manages to almost have moments
of depth and insight and turns right around and says something that
shows how pampered and moronic he is. He is, at times, his own devil??s
advocate.
He even reminisces about a time when he encountered a beggar that he
considers giving money to based on the fact that she was attractive. It
is when he wonders why he didn??t give her all of his worldly
possessions that he says, ?®that??s a question that could poison your
life. Your love of beauty could actually kill you. If you hear that
question, it means you??re sick. You??re mentally sick.?∆
I think this is a play whose quality is decided by the actor who plays
the speaker. In this case, the actor is also the director of the show,
Tom Glynn. Glynn is a professor of directing and acting at The
University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I thought he was a
wonderful actor and loved the choices he made as a director.
He almost channeled Shawn is his acting to the point that I kept
forgetting that I was listening to him speaking and not Shawn himself.
If he had only had Shawn??s lisp, I think their speech patterns would
have been identical.
This is not a show for everybody, mind you. It runs about an hour and
forty minutes long, contains little to no action whatsoever, and is
very depressing in nature. It certainly isn??t a play to take a child
to, nor would I recommend it for someone who doesn??t see much theatre.
I am a fan of Shawn??s writing and even I found my mind wandering at
parts.
Glynn paints himself into a dark and terrifying world and then pulls
his audience into it with him. While I don??t think I enjoyed more than
a few minutes of it, I thought it was a phenomenally well-acted and
beautifully written play. I give it four and a half of my six planets.
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