Fever - Softcover

Shawn, Wallace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571251226 ISBN 13: 9780571251223

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2009

Synopsis

A traveller falls ill in a poor country and plummets into a feverish self-examination. 'But something's been hidden from me, too. Something - a part of myself - has been hidden from me, and I think it's the part that's there on the surface, what anyone in the world could see about me if they saw out the window of a passing train. The incredible history of my feelings and my thoughts could fill up a dozen leather-bound books. But the story of my life - my behaviour, my actions - now that's a slim little paperback, and I've never read it.' "The Fever" was first performed by the author in an apartment neat Seventh Avenue in New York City in January 1990. It was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1991, and at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1997. "The Fever" was revived at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2009.

About this title

About the Author

Wallace Shawn's first play to be produced in New York was Our Late Night, directed by Andre Gregory at The Public Theater in 1975. A Thought in Three Parts was staged two years later by the Joint Stock Theatre Group in London, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. Shawn's next three plays - Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan & Lemon, and The Fever - were all performed in New York at the Public Theater and in London at the Royal Court. Aunt Dan and Lemon was revived in London in 1999 at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Tom Cairns. Shawn's next play, The Designated Mourner, premiered at the National Theatre, London, with Mike Nichols, Miranda Richardson, and David de Keyser under the direction of David Hare, and was then performed in New York by Wallace Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg, and Larry Pine under the direction of Andre Gregory. In 2009, the Royal Court held a Wallace Shawn season, reviving Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Fever, and staging the premiere of Grasses of a Thousand Colours. Shawn wrote the libretto for Allen Shawn's opera The Music Teacher, directed by Tom Cairns for The New Group in New York (2006). Shawn translated Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (performed in New York at the Roundabout, Studio 54, directed by Scott Elliott). Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory wrote and performed in the film My Dinner with Andre and Andre Gregory directed Shawn in Vanya on 42nd Street. Shawn has appeared as an actor in many films, including Manhattan, Clueless, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills,The Moderns, and The Wife. Shawn's Essays was published by Haymarket Books in 2009.

From Publishers Weekly

The narrator is having a mid-life crisis. He's shaking and vomiting in a hotel in a strange Third World country, contemplating the plight of the poor and the oppressed around the globe. As his annoying interior monologue unfolds, he becomes increasingly nauseated by the ignorance and complacency of his own moneyed existence, although he's not quite ready to give up the perks of privilege--luxury hotels, fine restaurants, glamorous theater events--in order that others might be able to feed their hungry children. The speaker wonders how he and his friends could be "decorating their lives and their world as if they were having a permanent party" while citizens in countries under totalitarian rule are being tortured and killed, yet he is unable to shake the contempt he feels for the impoverished. At the end of this pointless book, Shawn states that the considerable efforts of concerned parents, artists and politicians "do not change the life of the poor," a conclusion that the narrator conveniently employs to alleviate his guilt long enough to allow him a decent night's rest. This work was the basis for a dramatic monologue performed in New York City. Shawn is a playwright and actor.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0571251226
• ISBN 13: 9780571251223
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 64