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Theatre listings >
Fever
Playwright - Wallace Shawn (US).
Director - Guy Hollands.
Designer - Coco Hewitt.
Lighting Designer - Paul Sorley.
Company - Citizens' Company.
Cast - Stewart Porter as the Traveller.
Venue - Citizens' Theatre www.citz.co.uk
for information
Box Office - 0141 429 0022 119 Gorbals St Glasgow. open to 9pm
on performance days.
Dates - Pay what you can preview 4 Feb
5 Feb - 1 March at 7:30pm Not Suns or Mons
Pay what you can Sat Matinee on 22 Feb at 3pm
Run Time - 1 hours 30mins no Interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Uncomfortable glare illuminates us all.
Fever - Citizens' Company Production.
Stewart Porter as the Traveller.
© Richard Campbell 2003
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In the Stalls Studio a man dressed in black, Stewart Porter is
the Traveller. He tells us how he awoke delirious in a troubled third
world country. Uneasily he is trying to face being a have in this world
far fuller of have-nots.
We are waylaid by him, a modern version of the Ancient Mariner. He produces
his and our collective albatross, the poor always who are always there.
The Traveller is dressed in the uniform of affluence the fine knit jumper
and the designer suit in always fashionable black. Speaking in an attractive
East Coast US accent, he approaches, in a succession of stories and asides,
the paradox of having more than others. He may be an all American guy
but he's echoing arguments and excuses we hear in our own European accents
too.
Assaulted by his reasoning and musing, he carries us along. Like the dinner
guest who everyone else turns and listens to, he holds the room. His sudden
epiphany after reading Marx that human are all linked in this world of
prices, cheap labour, high yield stocks and copper bottom excuses bursts
his cushioned childhood and life. Guy Holland's direction ensures Porter's
delivery is paradoxically powerful for he never moves from the chair in
the harsh glare.
The theatre space designed by Coco Hewitt, glistens like a sanitised washroom
but has in it a designer white leather swivel chair. In the ceiling above
it are recessed halogen bulbs. Lighting designer Paul Sorley has further
increased its stark unflinching effect with white security lights angled
to cast their beams upwards.
The actor, design and direction all frees the experience, raising Fever
well beyond where the piece originated in the 1980s. Then writer and actor
Wallace Shawn performed it in New York living rooms to small audiences
of a dozen or so - comfortably clad, nourished and housed people from
similarly backgrounds to the Traveller as well as himself. It's a fascinating
essay on how governments, countries and factions all made up of individuals,
of us live. How we pay lip service to equality while locking away more
and more.
Shawn calls it an anti-play but its force and effect would be lessened
if it was printed and read in the privacy of one's own eyes only. Heard
in a communal space - seated together, affluent and able to be there -
its uncomfortable glare illuminates us all in an inescapable, unfavourable
and cowardly light.
© Thelma Good 7 Feburary 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
The Fever (Paperback) by Wallace Shawn is Published in US by Dramatist's
Play Service, June 1992 & 1998 ISBN: 0822203987
Fever is readable online from Lannan Foundation website
you can also view and hear a video recording of Wallace Shawn reading
his text.
Review of Wallace Shawn play
The Designated Mourner produced by Mull Theatre in 2003.
Previous Play directed by Guy Holland at the Citizens in 2002 -
Judith
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