Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 1991 Obie Award for Best Play and soon to be a film starring Vanessa Redgrave. The Fever has been called a starkly written, harrowing journey into the] dark night of the soul that is as searing on the page as it is on the stage (Booklist). While visiting a poverty-stricken country far from home, the unnamed narrator of The Fever is forced to witness the political persecution occurring just beyond a hotel window. In examining a life of comfort and relative privilege, the narrator reveals, I always say to my friends, We should be glad to be alive. We should celebrate life. We should understand that life is wonderful. But how does one celebrate life--take pleasure in beauty, for instance--while slowly becoming aware that the poverty and oppression of other human beings are a direct consequence of one's own pleasurable life? In a coruscating monologue, The Fever is most of all an eloquent meditation on living a life with conscience and action in ethical relationship to others in the world.