{"id":1062,"date":"2015-02-08T23:27:55","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T23:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2015-02-08T23:29:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T23:29:49","slug":"comfort-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2015\/02\/comfort-break.html","title":{"rendered":"Comfort break"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fever\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not bad people. At least, I\u2019m not rich people, which is almost the same thing, isn\u2019t it? As the oligarchs colonise London, carving out home cinemas and swimming pools beneath its streets, even to bumble along in shabby-chic daze seems virtuous.<\/p>\n

The Fever<\/em><\/a> blasted a hole in that particular ship of fools. In Wallace Shawn\u2019s 1990 monologue, recently performed by Tobias Menzies<\/a> with superbly insinuating force, a nameless speaker from a rich country visits a poor one (Shawn himself had visited \u2018places where people were killing each other, such as Nicaragua and El Salvador\u2019). Reflecting on the comfort he\u2019s enjoyed, he understands that his life depends on the vicious misery of countless others \u2013 at home, across the world. The fortunate are hammocked by the agony of strangers.<\/p>\n

The Fever<\/em>, produced by the Almeida at London\u2019s May Fair Hotel, was offered to a micro-spectatorship of around 28 people per night. Yet Robert Icke<\/a>\u2019s subtly unwholesome production was sharpened by being a boutique event in a bespoke space: it inhabited the play\u2019s argument. The May Fair is horribly smart, decorated in orientalist elegance, and as always at a swanky hotel, I feel I\u2019ve lowered the tone just by slinking across the foyer. We\u2019re ushered into a fourth-floor suite, where wine and chocs await. We sink into sofas or languish round a dining table.<\/p>\n

If you want to know what The Fever<\/em> is about, eavesdrop on my pre-show conversation. Sharing a satiny amber sofa, two amiable strangers and I had a polite waiting-for-kick-off chat about plays we\u2019d walked out of. One had recently abandoned the kill-for-a-ticket musical City of Angels<\/em> (\u2018boring\u2019), the other had blown off Covent Garden\u2019s Parsifal<\/em> at the first opportunity. In retrospect, I wince: having the opportunity both to afford expensive, sought-after theatre seats and then abandon them at a whim, might define the precious remove from the world\u2019s realities that Shawn atomises.<\/p>\n

A secret meeting of the bourgoisie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shawn first performed The Fever<\/em> in his friends\u2019 apartments, because, he said later<\/a>, that reinforced the sense that the play \u2018was like a secret meeting of the bourgeois class\u2019 \u2013 \u2018a kind of declaration to my own friends, first of all, and then to my class\u2026 that I no longer believed in the various justifications for our existence that I\u2019d formerly found convincing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Uncomfortable complicity is necessary to the play\u2019s affect: for all Clare Higgins<\/a>\u2019 baleful mastery at the Royal Court in 2009, she seemed like Cassandra, railing disregarded from the stage. We watched, from a safe dark distance. In the hotel suite, Menzies buttonholed us in the most relaxed way possible: we\u2019re all friends here. He caught my eye; I held his gaze, may even have smiled and nodded, long-stemmed glass in hand. I\u2019m amazed I didn\u2019t leap up and offer to refresh the nibbles.<\/p>\n

Ninety minutes later, goggling as my bus huffed past Mayfair restaurants, Berkeley Square, the dead-eyed mannequins in Bond Street boutiques, I pulled assurance back around me. The forbidding exclusivity beyond the windows is surely what Shawn was writing about \u2013 and it isn\u2019t my city. It gives me the creeps.<\/p>\n

I have learned nothing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, once you\u2019ve been eyeballed, and Menzies\u2019 narrowed eyes have seen you glug the free red, it\u2019s already too late. You can\u2019t pretend that this isn\u2019t about you. The text\u2019s verbal cues may suggest an especially snitzy shelf of privilege, but I\u2019m hardly a stranger to knowing assessment of the fish course and frets about comfortable socks. Unless you leave for a remote hermitage immediately afterwards, The Fever<\/em> \u2013 or you \u2013 has failed. That\u2019s its power (perhaps its limitation). In the days since I\u2019ve seen a movie, a dance triple bill and the new Stoppard. I\u2019ve enjoyed more free red wine, and read a plump booklet about the irreproachable sourcing of everything at the National Theatre\u2019s latest caf\u00e9: feelgood consumerism at its most self-regarding. I have clearly learned nothing. I might as well have I AM THE PROBLEM inked on my forehead.<\/p>\n

What to do with this unease? Shawn himself has continued working on stage and in Hollywood<\/a>, writing unassimilable plays while balancing roles which putter alongside something demeaning<\/a>. The Fever<\/em> isn\u2019t quite a call to action or a cry for help. Is it enough to\u00a0attend to Menzies\u2019 fur-edged voice in a hushed hotel room and leave with\u00a0shame beneath the skin?<\/p>\n

Photo of Tobias Menzies by Perou\/Almeida Theatre<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter at @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not bad people. At least, I\u2019m not rich people, which is almost the same thing, isn\u2019t it? As the oligarchs colonise London, carving out home cinemas and swimming pools beneath its streets, even to bumble along in shabby-chic daze seems virtuous. The Fever blasted a hole in that particular ship of fools. In Wallace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[175,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-robert-icke","9":"tag-theatre","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1065,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions\/1065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}