There are gradations of corruption and callous self-interest. A middle-class family that claims a questionable tax deduction is less despicable than a multi-national corporation that shields its profits in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. An executive for that corporation who then donates large sums to a favorite non-profit, likely expecting perks in return, is a bigger hypocrite than someone who throws a few bucks to charity without giving more thought or active service to the cause.
These distinctions arguably matter even more today than they did in 1990, when Wallace Shawn began performing The Fever, first in private readings and then in theaters. A roughly ninety-minute monologue delivered by an American traveler of obvious means, it begins with a friendly invitation and evolves into a scorching indictment of capitalism and all who have benefited from it—that is, pretty much anyone who can afford a nice hotel room or, well, a night at the theater. At the Minetta Lane, where The Fever is currently being revived by the New Group in a co-production with Audible, swag bags are stuffed under the seats, each containing a coffee mug, a COVID mask and a piccolo of champagne. Lili Taylor—playing the privileged Yank, under Scott Elliott’s direction—greets the audience warmly, carrying a small bouquet of flowers and pulling a couch and table onto Arnulfo Maldonado’s otherwise naked set.
“I think a completely bare stage can sometimes create a sort of threatening atmosphere,” her character explains, sweetly, “as if someone were saying, ‘Don’t get too comfortable, there won’t be anything charming or attractive in the course of our evening at all.'” Within moments, she is describing an execution—carried out in a rather less cozy setting, in a foreign country—in brutal detail.
Shawn knows his crowd, and The Fever was, if not a flat-out j’accuse, an attempt to shock his overwhelmingly liberal, literate, arts-supporting fans out of their complacency. The traveler, we learn, also loves the arts, and good coffee, and all manner of material comforts; she works hard for her money, she keeps insisting, and recognizes the suffering of the less fortunate. But as she lies in her well-appointed hotel room, haunted by images she has witnessed in a land torn by revolution, guilt and self-loathing begin to seethe in her. She fixates on particular people who have served her—a baker, a chambermaid—and the centuries of violent oppression that determined their circumstances, and her own. “I could perfectly well put an end to the whole exhausting battle,” she finally resolves. “If people are starving, give them food. If I have more than others, share what I have until I have no more than they do…I could certainly do that, and if I don’t do it, it’s because I’ve decided not to.”
Those of us observing are told, in no uncertain terms, that we’re no better: “You think about all the things which show that you’re different, which show that those who like you are decent…Now, a decent person cannot be a person who’s gotten away with something. A decent person cannot have what it’s not appropriate for them to have.”
In the thirty years since The Fever won the Obie Award—more than half of them, notably, under Democratic presidents—the inequality that Shawn addressed has increased exponentially, so that great disparities exist not only between the rich and the poor but between the rich and the obscenely, unaccountably rich. While it’s made clear that the traveler had an advantaged upbringing, we get few specifics about how the character has maintained or enhanced that advantage, or other details about the character’s identity—factors probably taken for granted when Shawn performed the play himself. Casting a woman, and Taylor in particular, was a clever stroke; while experienced in Shawn’s work, she is a more conventionally endearing presence than the playwright/actor, whose voice—like some of his writing, frankly—can suggest a self-indulgent whine. Though now in her fifties, Taylor can still evoke a youthful awkwardness and yearning, and she makes the traveler’s emotional journey, from wonder to wry ambivalence to despair and indignation, credible and compelling.
The Fever seems at once highly relevant and a bit simplistic at this particular point in our history, when the different aspects and degrees of social and economic privilege are so much in focus. Then again, it’s worth being reminded that all of us who enjoy a safe, decent standard of living play a role in sustaining a system in which others do not. And in the play’s best moments, Shawn’s searing eloquence makes a strong case that art can, in fact, serve a higher purpose—and give you a good rattling besides.
The Fever opened October 8, 2021, at the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs through October 24. Tickets and information: thenewgroup.org
