The Fever *** TNT
Here’s an odd one - the Royal Court‘s Wallace Shawn season kicks off with arevival of his 1990 monologue which aims, among other more far-reaching concerns, to make you feel guilty about going to the theatre. A programme note states that it was originally intended to be performed in private apartments by a single person of either sex and of flexible age.
This time round it’s the turn of award-winning actress Clare Higgins to address the audience – but not, as one might expect, in the more austere intimacy of theTheatre Upstairs but on a rehearsal room style set in the comfortable main house.
Taken ill in an unnamed, war-torn and impoverished country, the narrator (Higgins in blue jeans and crisp white blouse) recounts how she wakes in the night, flushed and feverish, with new and recurring thoughts of the inequity of life. Lying on the bathroom floor, she recalls her enjoyment of fine food and restaurants, the pleasure of visits to the theatre, and all the benefits that her privileged New York upbringing has led her to believe are hers by right. But although she is more than willing to give a needy beggar a handout, the prospect of giving away all her money - of sacrificing her lifestyle to alleviate the suffering of the poor - is one to which she, guiltily, cannot subscribe.
Higgins is a highly skilled and watchable communicator and delivers what proves to be a temporarily convincing argument, but although it prods the conscience, this 90-minute analysis of what Shawn ultimately calls the corruption of liberal, middle-class existence doesn’t completely stand up to closer scrutiny.
Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Sq, SW1 (020 7565 5000). Until May 2. £10-£25
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